Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
He continues the discourse on commerce begun at the end of the preceding chapter, teaching that the desire for profit is the cause of sins. Then, at verse 5, he treats various topics, especially concerning speech, testing, and the moderation of the tongue; and from verse 17 to verse 25, he shows at length how shameful it is to reveal a secret. From there to the end he teaches how detestable deceit and the deceitful are, and therefore that the evil they prepare for others must be rolled back upon themselves, so that it falls back and rebounds upon its authors.
Vulgate Text: Ecclesiasticus 27:1-33
1. On account of poverty many have sinned: and he who seeks to become rich turns away his eye. 2. As a stake is driven into the middle of the joining of stones, so also between buying and selling sin shall be pressed. 3. The offense shall be crushed together with the offender. 4. If you do not hold yourself steadfastly in the fear of the Lord, your house will quickly be overthrown. 5. As in the shaking of a sieve the dust remains, so the perplexity of a man remains in his thought. 6. The furnace tests the potter's vessels, and the trial of tribulation tests just men. 7. As the cultivation of a tree shows its fruit, so a word from the thought of a man's heart. 8. Do not praise a man before he speaks: for this is the testing of men. 9. If you pursue justice, you shall attain it; and you shall put it on like a robe of honor and dwell with it, and it shall protect you forever, and in the day of recognition you shall find a firm foundation. 10. Birds gather to their like: and truth returns to those who practice it. 11. The lion always lies in wait for its prey: so do sins for those who work iniquities. 12. A holy man abides in wisdom like the sun: for the fool changes like the moon. 13. In the midst of the senseless, keep your word for the right time: but in the midst of the thoughtful, be constant. 14. The talk of sinners is hateful, and their laughter is in the pleasures of sin. 15. Speech full of oaths will make the hair stand on end: and its irreverence is a stopping of the ears. 16. The shedding of blood is in the quarrel of the proud: and their cursing is a grievous thing to hear. 17. He who reveals the secrets of a friend loses trust, and shall not find a friend to his liking. 18. Love your neighbor, and bind yourself in faithfulness with him. 19. But if you have revealed his secrets, you shall not pursue after him. 20. For as a man who destroys his friend, so also is he who destroys the friendship of his neighbor. 21. And as one who lets a bird go from his hand, so you have abandoned your neighbor, and you shall not catch him again. 22. Do not follow him, for he is far away: he has escaped like a gazelle from the snare, because his soul has been wounded. 23. You will no longer be able to bind him. And there is reconciliation for the one who curses: 24. but to reveal the mysteries of a friend is the despair of an unhappy soul. 25. He who winks with his eye contrives wickedness, and no one will cast him off: 26. in the sight of your eyes he will sweeten his mouth, and will marvel at your words: but at last he will pervert his mouth, and in your words he will place a stumbling block. 27. Many things have I hated, and I have not equaled it, and the Lord will hate him. 28. He who throws a stone on high, it shall fall upon his own head: and the treacherous blow shall divide the wounds of the treacherous. 29. And he who digs a pit shall fall into it: and he who sets a stone for his neighbor shall stumble on it: and he who lays a snare for another shall perish in it. 30. He who devises the most wicked counsel, it shall be rolled back upon himself, and he shall not know whence it comes upon him. 31. Mockery and reproach belong to the proud, and vengeance like a lion shall lie in wait for them. 32. Those who delight in the fall of the just shall perish in a snare: and pain shall consume them before they die. 33. Anger and fury — both are abominable things, and a sinful man shall be subject to them.
First Part of the Chapter.
1. ON ACCOUNT OF POVERTY MANY HAVE SINNED: AND HE WHO SEEKS TO BECOME RICH TURNS AWAY HIS EYE
from justice and the right, from God and God's law. He explains what he said at the end of the preceding chapter: the greedy merchant is with difficulty freed from the neglect of eternal things, because he turns his eyes from them to profit. The sense therefore is, as if to say: There are two rocks in the sea of this world, against one or the other of which men commonly dash and strike, and fall into sin and ruin — namely wealth and poverty. For the poor, in order to flee present or approaching poverty, devise many injustices, schemes, frauds, lies, etc.; women also, on account of destitution, prostitute their modesty and their bodies. The wealthy, however, whether in possession or in hope and desire, in order to acquire, preserve, and increase their riches, forget God, conscience, justice, and piety, and turn their eye away from them — because they direct it to profit to be captured by any means, through right and wrong. Wherefore Solomon, foreseeing this, entreats God, saying: "Give me neither beggary nor riches: grant me only what is necessary for my sustenance, lest perhaps being sated I be enticed to deny, and say: Who is the Lord? Or, compelled by want, I steal and perjure the name of my God" (Proverbs XXX, 8). Hence Silius, book XIII, says: "Destitution is prone to crime." And Philemon in Stobaeus, sermon 94: "Poverty," he says, "is ready at hand for perpetrating evils."
Wherefore when Sergius Sulpicius Galba and Aurelius were competing in the senate for the commission to Spain against Viriathus, Scipio, when asked his opinion, said: "I would not have either of them sent, because one has nothing, and nothing is enough for the other." So Valerius Maximus, book VI, chapter IV. And Cicero says: "There are two things that drive men to disgraceful gain: poverty and greed." Suetonius writes that the Emperor Domitian was made rapacious by poverty. Sallust in the Catilinarian War: "All," he says, "whom infamy, destitution, and a guilty conscience tormented — these were Catiline's closest associates and friends." Lactantius, in the book On the Wrath of God, chapter XX: "Many things," he says, "invite to sin: age, violence, destitution." Again Sallust, in the Jugurthine War: "To the most destitute," he says, "all things seem honorable at a price."
Our translator read χαρὶν τυφλώσεως, that is, on account of poverty; others now read χαρὶν ἀδιαφόρων, that is, on account of what is indifferent, meaning "on account of riches, many have sinned" — for, as follows, "he who seeks to become rich turns away his eye" from law and virtue. For riches are indifferent things, and earthly, that is, goods of fortune, not of virtue, which we can therefore use either well or badly according to the free choice of our will. Whence from the Greek you might translate: on account of the goods of fortune many sin, and he who seeks to abound turns away his eye. The Tigurina has: he perverts his eye (that is, his judgment and thought, says Vatablus). The Syriac: many have sinned because there is not in them the fear of God, but the love of gain, and he who wishes to multiply sins turns his eyes from God, heaven, and hell.
As did those shameless elders who ambushed Susanna, of whom it is said in Daniel chapter XIII, verse 9: "They perverted their mind and turned away their eyes so as not to see heaven, nor remember just judgments." For everyone who resolves to fornicate, to steal, to kill, or otherwise to sin, turns the eyes of his mind from God, heaven, hell, and eternity — because if he attentively considered these things, he would be so struck with their fear and dread that it would be impossible for him to sin. Both readings amount to the same, because the flight from poverty is motivated by the love of riches: whoever therefore sins on account of poverty sins equally on account of riches — for it is precisely to flee poverty and attain riches that they defraud, perjure, practice usury, etc.
Again, the desire for riches — that is, great avarice — is a poverty of the mind. For the greedy man, even though he is rich, nevertheless thinks himself poor, and therefore always desires more and more. Such was Ahab, king of Israel, who, asking Naboth for his vineyard, said: "Give me your vineyard, and it will serve me as a vegetable garden." On which words St. Ambrose, in the book On Naboth, chapter I, says: "O rich man, you do not know how poor you are, and how destitute you seem to yourself, you who call yourself rich! The more you have, the more you demand; and however much you acquire, you still lack. Greed is inflamed by gain, not extinguished." And below he proves this from the very petition: "Give me, he says. What other voice is this than that of a beggar? What other voice than that of one publicly begging for alms, except: Give me? — that is, give me, because I am in want. Give me, because I can have no other means of sustenance. Give me, because I have no bread for food, no coin for drink, no means for nourishment, no substance for clothing. Give me, because the Lord has given you the means to be generous; He has not given them to me. Give me, because unless you give, I shall not be able to have anything. Give me, because it is written: Give alms. How abject these words, how cheap! For they have not the feeling of humility, but the fire of greed."
Whence Aristides said to a rich man who reproached him for his poverty: "To me indeed poverty brings no evil, but to you riches bring no few disturbances." So Antonius in the Melissa, part I, chapter XXXIV. And Diogenes said to one who reproached him for his poverty: "Unhappy man, what are you saying? I have seen no one exercise tyranny on account of poverty, but all on account of riches." So Stobaeus, sermon 95.
Hence mystically Rabanus says: "Many sin through poverty, but more on account of poverty of the heart (that is, of a steadfast mind and will) than of the body — because we read of many holy men who were poor in the things of this world, yet rich in faith and virtues."
2 and 3. AS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE JOINING OF STONES A STAKE IS DRIVEN, SO ALSO BETWEEN BUYING AND SELLING SIN SHALL BE PRESSED (so the Greek and Latin
whence Rabanus, Lyranus, and Jansenius wrongly read "sins"; and others wrongly read "price" instead of "sin"). THE OFFENSE SHALL BE CRUSHED TOGETHER WITH THE OFFENDER. — So the Roman edition. Others, like Jansenius, read "sin" instead of "offense." The sense is, as if to say: As a stake — that is, a post or rod — driven between stones that are joined and fitted together is, as it were, pressed and hemmed in by them on all sides, so also sin is, as it were, pressed and hemmed in between buyer and seller, since each wants to deceive the other: the seller tries to sell his goods for more than they are worth, while the buyer tries to buy for less. For this reason the one overvalues and praises his goods beyond what is just, the other depreciates and disparages them. In which matter many lies, frauds, deceits, perjuries, etc., are committed. Therefore by this process between these two, sin and offense are, as it were, squeezed and crushed together with the sinner and offender. So the Greek, which in its characteristically concise fashion reads: between the joining of stones a stake is driven, and between selling and buying sin is crushed. The Syriac has: between rock and rock a stake enters, and in the midst of buyer and seller sins are strengthened — as if to say: Just as a stake surrounded on all sides by stones, though pressed, is nevertheless strengthened and reinforced by them, in equal manner sins are strengthened, increased, and multiplied among greedy buyers and sellers.
The Tigurina has: as a peg driven between the joining of stones, sin is pressed between selling and buying, and the offense shall be consumed together with the offender. It is therefore signified that among greedy buyers and sellers contending for their avarice, sin is so hemmed in, constricted, and enclosed that it cannot escape without being captured, seized, and joined together by both. Just as, on the contrary, truth and justice are so pressed between the same parties that they are suppressed and oppressed — even as a hare surrounded on all sides by dogs is pressed, caught, and devoured by them. Wherefore by the just judgment of God "the offense shall be crushed together with the offender" — either by the judge who will order the damage inflicted by the wrongdoer to be repaired, or by the injured buyer or seller who, when he perceives the fraud and damage, will see to it that it is repaired, or by God Himself, who is the just avenger of all injustice and offense. Therefore while the merchant strives to insert deceits between buying and selling, God likewise strives to crush him together with his offenses. That this is so, experience teaches. So says Palacius, and likewise Lyranus. For in death, he says, the sinner is crushed and the act of sinning is terminated, because then the time of meriting and demeriting ceases.
This is what Ezekiel casts up against Tyre, that most famous marketplace of merchants, in chapter XXVIII, verse 16: "Through the multitude of your trading your interior was filled with iniquity, and you sinned" — in Hebrew: the multitudes of your trading filled your heart with iniquity. Some plausibly think there is an allusion here to the stake at which, as at a target, archers aim their arrows and missiles in order to pierce it. For thus in ancient times Roman soldiers and recruits, when they were being trained for battle, would fix a stake in the ground and hurl spears and javelins at it in a mock charge; and so they learned to cast accurately, to fight, and to engage in combat — as attested by Vegetius, book II, chapter XXIII, and book I, chapter XI, and Polybius, book XVII.
For just as this stake, being fixed among stones, cannot escape being pierced by many javelins from those who hurl them — so much so that, being filled with them, it scarcely has any free space to receive more — so likewise buyers and sellers, through so many lying and fraudulent contracts, promises, and assertions, pierce the stake of sin, as it were with javelins, in their zeal for profit, so that scarcely anything can be added to them. Others understand the stake as a peg from which buckets, kettles, pots, and other vessels are hung, as in Isaiah chapter XXII, 23 — as if to say: The business of buyers and sellers, like a stake placed between the two, is loaded with so many sins that it appears too narrow, being one from which so many crimes, like vessels, hang down.
Tropologically, the stake is the desire of growing rich. For against this — that is, against the soul gaping for profit — demons will rush in full force and pierce it with so many javelins of sin that they fill and overwhelm it. Thus Anacharsis, according to Laertius, says: "The marketplace is a place of impostors, appointed for the purpose of deceiving one another." Wherefore the Athenians provided by law "that in the marketplace of goods for sale all lying should be absent" — namely ἀγορὰ ἀψευδεύειν (the marketplace should be free of lies), as attested by Theophrastus in his book On Laws. Hence the philosophers and Fathers so often censure commerce — that is, the vices and frauds of merchants. See St. Ambrose, On Duties, book I, chapter XLIX; St. Augustine on Psalms XVIII and LXX; St. Chrysostom, book II, On Compunction; Plato, On Laws; Aristotle, Politics, book III, chapter III, and book VII, chapter IX; Valerius Maximus, book III, chapter III; Philostratus, books IV and VIII.
Here therefore that saying of Jeremiah, Lamentations III, 12, is true: "He has set me as a target for the arrow: He has sent into my loins the daughters of His quiver." For Christ on the cross was, as it were, the target at which the Jews hurled all the venom of their blows and words — because sinners, especially merchants, had pierced their souls with so many javelins of crime; for Christ took upon Himself the task of atoning and expiating these.
To this point belongs what Hugo of St. Victor says in book II of the Didascalicon, chapter XXIV: For merchants "eloquence is most necessary. Whence also he who presides over eloquence is called Mercury, as if κύριος (lord) of merchants" — although others give a different and more ancient etymology for Mercury.
This maxim is illustrated by the deed and saying of a mime whose most witty urbanity is celebrated; who, having promised in the theatre that he would tell at another performance what everyone had in their minds and what they all wanted, and when on the appointed day a larger crowd gathered with great expectation, and all were in suspense and silence, is reported to have said: "You want to buy cheaply and sell dearly." In which saying of this most frivolous actor, nevertheless all found their own consciences, and they applauded with wonderful favor the one who set the truth before everyone's eyes — a truth that was nonetheless unexpected." Yet the same author excepts some from this universal maxim: "For I know," he says, "a man who, when a book was offered to him for sale and he saw the seller asking a low price because he did not know its value, gave him the just price, which was much more, though the seller did not expect it."
Finally, hear the author of the Opus Imperfectum treating this maxim of Sirach, found among the works attributed to St. Chrysostom, Homily 38, on the passage of St. Matthew, chapter XXI: He cast out those buying and selling from the temple. "It signifies," he says, "that a merchant can scarcely or never please God. And therefore no Christian ought to be a merchant; or if he wishes to be one, let him be expelled from the Church of God, since the Prophet says: Because I have not known commerce, I shall enter into the powers of the Lord. For just as one who walks between two enemies, wanting to please both and commend himself to them, cannot do so without speaking ill — for he must needs speak ill of this one to that one, and of that one to this one — so he who buys and sells cannot do so without lying and perjury. For of necessity the buyer swears that the thing is not worth as much as he is paying for it, and the seller swears that the thing is worth more than the price at which he sells it. Nor is their wealth stable. For the wealth of such people will either perish while they are still alive, or be squandered by wicked heirs, or their inheritance will pass to strangers and enemies. What is gathered from evil cannot profit for good. Just as if you sift wheat or some kind of grain in a sieve — while you toss it back and forth, all the grain gradually falls down, and in the end nothing remains in the sieve except refuse alone — so also the wealth of merchants, while they go and come, between buying and selling diminishes, and in the end nothing remains for them except sin alone."
But note here that in the author of the Opus Imperfectum several errors are contained. Such is his statement at the beginning that a merchant can scarcely or never please God, and therefore no Christian ought to be a merchant — although St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae II-II, Question LXXVII, article 4, excuses him by saying that he speaks of one who places his ultimate end in profit, prepared to perjure himself, defraud, practice usury, etc., in order to gain — and likewise our Lessius excuses him in book II, On Justice, chapter XXI, doubt 1, number 4. Note further that for what we read in Psalm LXX, 16: "Because I have not known γραμματείας, that is, literature, I shall enter into the powers of the Lord," St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, Arnobius, Cassiodorus, and others read πραγματείας, that is, commerce; and in Hebrew ספרות sephorot signifies not only letters but also counting and computation, such as that of merchants — as if David said: Because I have not known commerce, or even the affairs of this world which distract the mind from God and fix it upon the earth and gain, therefore I shall approach to celebrate God's power and mercy toward me.
Therefore in this passage commerce itself is not condemned, but the vices of commerce — such as those of men who love their merchandise more than their fidelity. This is the vice of merchants, not of commerce, as St. Augustine teaches in the same place. Or rather, commerce and business are not condemned, but the holy and pious leisure of praying and praising God is preferred to them. So also Cassiodorus, on Psalm LXX: "Those merchants," he says, "are deemed abominable who, giving no consideration to the justice of God, through immoderate ambition for money defile their goods more by perjuries than by prices. Such men the Lord cast out of the temple, saying: Do not make the house of My Father a house of commerce."
4. IF YOU DO NOT HOLD YOURSELF STEADFASTLY IN THE FEAR OF THE LORD, YOUR HOUSE WILL QUICKLY BE OVERTHROWN.
This maxim holds good universally everywhere; here however it looks to greedy buyers and sellers, as if to say: If those greedy men do not maintain the fear of God in their buying and selling, and thereby restrain their avarice, they will quickly see their house, family, and wealth — which they built by their deceits — overthrown. Therefore it is avarice that drives the greedy man to ruin and destruction; its remedy is the fear of God, which restrains and reins in the greedy man who is rushing headlong over the precipice.
Whence the Greek has: unless a man earnestly holds himself in the fear of the Lord, his house will quickly be overthrown. The Tigurina: unless a man diligently maintains the religion of the Lord, his house will shortly be overthrown. The Syriac: my son, if you have transgressed even a little against the fear of God, for a long time you will fail. Whence Gabriel Vasquez, I-II, tome II, disputation 196, chapter IV: "By this maxim," he says, "Sirach admonishes merchants to trade, buy, and sell with the fear of God."
Tropologically, Lyranus says: If you do not hold yourself steadfastly in the fear of God, the edifice of virtues will quickly be overthrown because of the inclination to evil, according to Genesis VIII: "The sense and thought of the human heart are prone to evil from youth." For man is like a ship in a river flowing downward; unless it is strongly pushed upward or held back, it immediately descends by the force of the current. So man easily slides into vices unless he holds himself firmly against the impulse of the tinder of sin, by the fear of God as if by a rope or towline. So far Lyranus. And St. Bernard, Sermon 2 On the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, chapter I: "For every edifice of virtues," he says, "immediately tends toward the precipice if it has lost the support of this grace." And even the comic playwright says: "The soul that knows how to fear knows how to walk safely." And Pliny, book VII, epistle 17: "Fear is the sharpest corrector." And another: "Whom shame does not correct, fear amends."
Second Part of the Chapter,
Which Teaches That a Man Is Known By Three Things: First, By His Thoughts; Second, By Tribulation; Third and Especially, By His Speech — For the Wise Man Speaks Wisely and Holily, the Fool Foolishly and Wickedly.
5. AS IN THE SHAKING (St. Augustine in the Speculum reads "in pertusura," that is, in the perforated holes, or in the eyelets) OF A SIEVE THE DUST REMAINS, SO THE PERPLEXITY OF A MAN IN HIS THOUGHT.
First, Palacius refers this maxim to the preceding one, as if to explain it, in this sense — as if to say: A woman shaking a sieve finds after the shaking bran and refuse; so a man, if he thinks upon himself, if he examines himself, after this examination will find misery and want — indeed, what evil will he not find? If you are pleased with yourself, if you esteem yourself too highly, you do so because you have not shaken yourself, have not examined yourself. Shake yourself out, and when the flour of your goods falls through, you will find nothing but bran and misery — for every living man is altogether vanity, all flesh is grass: he is dust, and to dust he shall return.
Second, Rabanus says: By a fitting example he shows that the fear of God purifies the soul of man. For just as a sieve collects the refuse and separates the grain from the chaff, so the fear of God, through aporia — that is, care and anxiety of mind — drives out all foul thoughts from the heart.
Third, and better, others judge that here there is a separate and new maxim about the hardships that afflict a man's mind and thought — as if to say: Just as when a sieve is struck, shaken, and rattled, the flour slips through the holes while the dust — that is, the bran and refuse — remains in the sieve, so when the mind of man is agitated and shaken by various thoughts, like a sieve (hence "sieve" is called quasi currifugum, because the grain runs through it, says St. Isidore, book XX of the Origins, chapter VIII), especially when it is in affliction and tribulation, the good and joyful thoughts often slip away, and after all the agitation of the mind nothing remains in it except aporia — that is, perplexity, anxiety, and sadness of spirit. As if to say: This is the natural weakness of man and of the mind — that it lets go of good and joyful things and retains the bad and sad; when, on the contrary, it would be better to let go of the bran — that is, to cast off sorrows — and retain the flour — that is, to occupy the mind with joyful thoughts and events, whether past or future.
Plutarch truly says in his book On Tranquility of Mind: "Just as," he says, "medicinal cupping-glasses draw the foulest blood from the flesh, so you gather into yourself all the worst things (he speaks to one who is burdened and afflicted) from your affairs, no better than that Chian merchant who, though he sold the best wine, bought sour wine for himself." For melancholic, timid, sad, and troubled people are accustomed to fix their minds on thoughts similar to themselves — namely gloomy, fearful, mournful, mistrustful ones, which are suggested by the sadness of which they are full — and to let go of, indeed to repel, joyful thoughts full of good hope, as if they were foreign to themselves, unsuitable and unwelcome.
Note: For "dust" the Greek has κόπρος, that is, dung, excrement, dregs, refuse. Again, for "aporia" the Complutensian edition has σκῦλα, that is, spoils; whence they translate: in the shaking of a sieve the dung remains, so the spoils of a man in his thought. The Roman edition reads σκύβαλα, that is, refuse, filth, rubbish, as I said in the preceding chapter, verse 26; whence they translate: in the striking of the sieve dung remains, so the refuse of a man in his thought. The Tigurina: as filth remains in a shaken sieve, so reason, or thought, discerns the impurities of a man. Our translator seems to have read it in reverse order — namely, in the first place σκῦλα, that is, spoils (meaning dust and bran, of which wheat and flour are stripped in the shaking of the sieve), and in the second place, instead of κοπρία (as others now read), ἀπορία. This reading is certainly more convenient and fitting, as is evident to one who considers it. Now ἀπορία in Greek has two meanings: first, want, scarcity, neediness; second, uncertainty, difficulty, anxiety, diffidence, perplexity, despair — which is a want of mind, counsel, and hope. For ἀπορέω means to be in doubt, to hesitate, to waver in mind, to lack counsel, to fail, to be distressed, to be perplexed. Thus the Apostle says, II Corinthians IV, 8: "In all things we suffer tribulation but are not hemmed in; ἀπορούμεθα (that is, we are perplexed) but not abandoned." In both senses ἀπορία can be taken here, but more in the latter sense.
The Syriac, substituting another simile of the smoke of fire for the dust of the sieve, translates thus: as much smoke rises above a fire, so the narratives of men above their thought — as if to say: Just as a fire, agitating and heating the pot placed above it, raises many vapors and fumes, so the mind of man, turning over in mind and thought many things heard, seen, and considered, thinks and devises many things; and then, recounting these to others, spreads vain stories and rumors among the common people.
Our translator, instead of διαλογισμός, seems to have read θλίψεως, that is, of tribulation. And so reads St. Augustine in the Speculum, and St. Jerome in book II Against Jovinian, whose words are cited in De Poenitentia, distinction 2, chapter Si enim, section Liberi arbitrii. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Just as fire in a furnace, baking and hardening earthen vessels fashioned by a potter, tests them and shows whether they were rightly fashioned by him or not — for those that were rightly tempered and bonded endure in the fire and are hardened by it, while those that were not crack and shatter — so likewise trial and tribulation tests and shows what sort of person the just man is. For those who remain constant in temptation show that they are founded and established in justice; but those who fall in spirit under it show that they are not stable in justice, but fickle and inconstant — because they believe for a time and in the time of temptation fall away, as Christ says in Luke VIII. This maxim signifies that we are made of clay and are, as it were, clay in the hand of the potter, namely God; and therefore, like earthen vessels, we are fired by the fire of tribulation, so that through it we may be both purified, tested, and made solid in virtue, just as an earthen vessel receives solidity from fire.
He alludes to Wisdom III, 6: "As gold in the furnace He proved them." And Malachi III: "He is like a refining fire and like the herb of fullers; and He shall sit refining and cleansing silver, and He shall purge the sons of Levi and refine them like gold." And Psalm XVI, 3: "You have proved my heart and visited it by night; You have tried me by fire, and iniquity has not been found in me." For, as Paul says, Romans V, 3: "Tribulation works patience, patience works proof, and proof works hope."
Hence learn that tribulation and temptation are nothing other than πειρασμός, that is, a testing and trial, by which God proves, tests, and explores the faith, constancy, and virtue of each person, according to that saying of Moses: "The Lord tests you, so that it may be manifest whether you love Him or not, with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deuteronomy XIII, 3). Hear St. Bernard, in his treatise On the Steps of Humility, in the ninth step: "The furnace tests the potter's vessels," he says, "and tribulation discerns the truly penitent. For he who truly repents does not shrink from the labor of penance; but whatever is imposed upon him for the fault which he hates, he patiently embraces with a quiet conscience. In obedience itself, too, when hard and contrary things arise — whatever injuries are inflicted — he endures without being provoked, so as to judge that he stands on the fourth step of humility. But he whose confession is feigned, when questioned with even one slight insult or a trifling penance, can no longer feign humility or conceal his pretense. He murmurs, gnashes his teeth, grows angry, and is proved not to stand on the fourth step of humility but to have fallen to the ninth step of pride — which, as it has been described, can rightly be called feigned confession. How great, do you think, is the confusion then in the heart of the proud man, when his fraud is exposed, peace is lost, praise diminished, and yet guilt is not washed away? At last he is noticed by all, judged by all, and all are the more indignant insofar as they see that whatever they previously thought of him was false. Then the prelate must act, thinking that the less he spares that man, the more he would offend everyone if he spared one alone."
Note: Tribulation is not only a furnace that torments, proves, and purges souls chosen by God; it is also a ring by which Christ espouses those same souls as brides. With this ring Christ touched the eye of St. Gertrude and inflicted perpetual pain upon her; whence she learned that, just as a ring is the sign of marriage, so adversity is the certain sign and pledge of divine election, so that through it the soul enters, as it were, into marriage with Christ — to such a degree that every person who is troubled and afflicted can say with St. Agnes: "With His ring my Lord Jesus Christ has espoused me, and as a bride He has adorned me with a crown." These words are found verbatim in the Life of St. Gertrude, book III, chapter II. To this maxim belongs that saying of St. Ephrem, in his treatise On the Fear of God: "Many are monks in habit, but few are fighters; in the time of temptation, however, the proof of the monk appears."
I said more about this trial and testing of tribulation in chapter II, verse 8. Hence conclude that the trial of tribulation is not to be fled but rather to be sought by the just. Would not well-tempered potter's vessels, if they could feel, desire, and speak, say that they long for the fire of the furnace, so that they might be baked and hardened by it? So also the just, supported by God's grace, long for the flame of tribulation that may burn away whatever is impure in them and make them solid and perfect in virtue.
David knew this; whence he prays in Psalm XXV: "Prove me, O Lord, and test me; burn my reins and my heart." St. Gregory Nazianzen says excellently in Oration 23: "A philosophical soul is made more noble by what it has suffered, and as glowing iron is hardened by a sprinkling of cold water, so it is hardened by dangers" — so that you may rightly apply to it that saying of Horace:
As the oak pruned by the harsh double-axe On Algidus, rich in dark foliage, Through losses, through slaughter, from the very steel Draws strength and spirit.
And St. Basil, Oration 11, On Patience and Endurance: "As a storm tests the helmsman of a ship," he says, "the stadium the athlete, the battle line the soldier, calamity the magnanimous, so temptation tests the Christian. And just as the labors of contests attract athletes with crowns, so also the testing that comes from temptations leads Christians to perfection, provided we receive with fitting endurance and all thanksgiving what is ordained by the Lord." And even Pliny says to the consul Trajan, chapter XXXI: "Adversity proves the great, prosperity the fortunate."
An illustrious example is found in the Life of St. Litifredus, Bishop of Pavia, around the year of the Lord 850, who shone with singular patience. For, as Philippus Ferrarius writes in his Catalogue of the Saints of Italy, in his Life, although he could have avenged injuries inflicted upon him without detriment to charity, he nevertheless refused, making use of that saying of the Apostle: "Patience is necessary for you, that you may carry away the promises." He even bore insults from lowly persons with an even spirit; and to his attendant who was indignant that certain unworthy words had been spoken against him, and who urged him to avenge the insult for the dignity of his office, arguing that good people live more peacefully when the wicked are corrected with just punishment, the holy Bishop replied: "It is better that the good should be exercised by the wicked; nor should the good wish for the death of the wicked. For just as gold is proved by fire, so the good become more perfect through persecution by the wicked." Wherefore he shone forth, famous for miracles, which the same Ferrarius recounts from the history of Pavia and other sources.
St. Augustine, Sermon 82 On the Seasons, gives examples from Sacred Scripture — the patriarchs Jacob and Joseph. For when he asks why God permitted Jacob to be tormented for 30 years in ignorance of what had become of Joseph (who was in neighboring Egypt — for Jacob thought him dead), he responds: "Because Jacob could not be without those small sins, and God, wishing to consume those small sins in this world by the fire of tribulation, fulfilled in him what He Himself said through the Holy Spirit: 'The furnace tests the potter's vessels, and the trial of tribulation tests just men.' And: 'God scourges every son whom He receives.' And: 'Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.' Therefore, so that God might present our holy Jacob as purified gold at the future judgment, He first wiped away from him all the stains of sins, so that the judge's fire might find nothing in him to burn." He then adduces Joseph himself, and assigns this as the reason for his two-year imprisonment: namely, that he had placed his hope more in a man than in God, when he asked the chief cupbearer to obtain his liberation from Pharaoh. "As if God were saying to him," he says: "'I show you that you ought to seek help from Me rather than from a man. For it must be believed without any doubt that, for the chastening of holy Joseph, God did not permit the chief cupbearer to remember what holy Joseph had begged of him when he was released from prison. And because Joseph himself, although holy at that time, could not be without sin, therefore he was kept in prison for so long, so that in him might be fulfilled what is written: Those whom I love, I rebuke; and those whom I cherish, I chastise.'"
6. THE FURNACE TESTS THE POTTER'S VESSELS, AND THE TRIAL OF TRIBULATION TESTS JUST MEN.
The word "just" is no longer in the Greek. Again, for "tribulation" the Greek has διαλογισμός, that is, disputation, discussion, reasoning, conversation, dialogue, deliberation; also thought, conception, sense of the mind, purpose, will. Whence the Complutensian edition translates: the furnace tests the potter's vessels, and the trial of a man is in his thought — as if to say: Just as the furnace tests the potter's vessels, so thought tests what kind of man he is; for the learned man thinks learned things, the holy man holy things, the chaste man chaste things, the heavenly man heavenly things, the carnal man carnal things, the fool foolish things, the foul man foul things, the proud man proud things, etc. Do you therefore wish to know what sort of person you are, where your love is, what you love? See what you frequently think about — for that very thing is what you love; for where love is, there also is the mind, as well as the eye.
The Roman edition translates: the furnace tests the potter's vessels, and the trial (that is, as others render it, the testing and exploration) of a man is in his conversation — as if to say: Just as the furnace tests the vessel, so speech tests, explores, and shows what the heart of a man is like. For speech flows from the heart, as a ray from the sun. This version agrees with the following verse. The Tigurina translates: the furnace exercises the potter's vessels, but reason or thought tests a man — as if to say: Reason tests the rational being, thought tests the thinker. Do you therefore wish to know what kind of rational soul is in this man, what kind of mind? Examine what his reason, thought, and discourse are like. For these four verses in the Greek each have λογισμόν or διαλογισμόν, that is, reason and speech, and they establish it as the test and indicator of the heart.
Tropologically, Lyranus says: Just as in a sieve there remain chaff, small stones, refuse, and other useless things, so after the act of sin there remains in the thought of the sinner aporia — that is, the anguish and remorse of sin, which is called the worm of conscience, which continually torments, gnaws, and tortures the sinner.
7. AS THE CULTIVATION OF A TREE SHOWS ITS FRUIT, SO A WORD FROM THE THOUGHT OF A MAN'S HEART.
So the Roman and Complutensian Latin editions, although St. Augustine, in the Speculum, reads "from the thought of a man's heart," that is, of a wise man; others read: so the deliberate word shows a man's heart. So Rabanus. And so the Greek corrected at Rome reads: the cultivation of a tree, they say, its fruit shows; so the deliberate word shows a man's heart. The Complutensian Greek reads: the cultivation of a tree, they say, its fruit shows; so the speech from thought in the heart of a man. Others: so the speech from the thought of a man's heart — that is, speech flowing from the thought of a man's heart. The Tigurina: as the cultivation of a tree indicates its fruit, so meditated reason, or thought, indicates the hearts of men. For in Greek it reads λόγος, that is, reason or speech, or λογισμός, that is, thought, reasoning. The Syriac: as the cultivation of a tree produces its fruits, so the thoughts of men are above their meditations.
All these readings and versions come to the same thing. For the sense is, as if to say: Just as the cultivation — that is, the rustic farming and tending — of a tree shows the fruit of the tree, and from the fruit consequently what kind of tree it is, so likewise a word uttered from the thought and meditation of a man's heart shows the fruit of the heart, and consequently what kind of heart it is. Furthermore, just as the fruit not only shows what kind of tree it is, but also how it was cultivated by the farmer, so likewise the word and speech not only shows what kind of heart it is, but also how it has been cultivated. For this is what the Greek already cited means, and thus Hugo understands the Latin version by hypallage — as if to say: The fruit of the tree shows the cultivation of the wood, that is, of the tree. This is the same as what Christ says in Matthew XII, 33: "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. Brood of vipers, how can you speak good things when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings forth good things from the treasure (of his heart), and the evil man brings forth evil things from the treasure (of his heart)." So Rabanus, and Palacius says: Good and diligent cultivation of a tree brings its good fruit to light; so good and diligent cultivation of the thought of our heart produces a good word. On the contrary, a neglected tree produces barren fruit; and neglected thought produces words that are either evil or foolish — for there is an agreement between heart and mouth. Through the mouth you will pronounce what is in the heart.
He says "from the thought," because a word uttered from prior thought and premeditation indicates the state and disposition of the heart, but not an unpremeditated word that is brought forth from sudden anger, sadness, or some other passion — for passion extorts that, whereas the heart does not bring it forth deliberately from its treasury. Whence some translate from the Greek: as the cultivation of a tree is shown by its fruit, so a meditated speech declares the spirit of a man. And a Latin manuscript from Liege, cited by Franciscus Lucas, reads thus: "As the cultivation of a tree shows its fruit, so the word of the thought (that is, of the reflection and meditation) of a man's heart" — namely, it shows and reveals that very heart; although not infrequently sudden words, if they are frequent, indicate the habitual disposition of the mind even when it is drowsy, distracted, or sleeping.
For thus St. Francis Xavier, even while sleeping or seized by delirium, poured forth pious conversations with Christ, saying: "My Jesus, good Jesus, Jesus my love" — because his heart was full of, indeed burning with, love of Jesus; whence even when dreaming he spoke of Him, and when delirious he uttered nothing else from heart and mouth.
Morally, hence learn that our heart needs cultivation, just as a field does. Again, the first fruit of the heart is thought, the second is speech. Therefore, in order that one may speak correctly, chastely, and holily, let one frequently think and meditate on the same; and in order to think frequently on such things, let one thoroughly imbue the heart with chastity and holiness. For just as a body saturated with balsam breathes out balsam, so a heart imbued with holiness and full of God breathes out nothing but holiness and God — just as vessels filled with wine exhale nothing but the scent of wine, and the stomach belches up the juice of the delicate food with which it is full. The voice, therefore, is the interpreter of the mind and the indicator of the person; whence Isaac recognized his son Jacob by his voice alone and distinguished him from Esau. Christ Himself teaches the same in the words cited just above. And so do the philosophers. Chrysippus, when asked what the mind of man is, answered: "It is the fountain of speech" — "for just as streams flow from a fountain, so speech proceeds from the heart and mind of man." So Stobaeus, sermon 1. Another says: "From the voice we recognize a man whose face we have not seen; for each person has his own voice; so from a man's speech one may conjecture his mind and life." And: "Just as the painter Protogenes recognized Apelles from a single line, though he had never otherwise seen him, so from a single reply a wise man will detect the genius and prudence of another." I will cite more under the following verse.
8. DO NOT PRAISE A MAN BEFORE HIS SPEECH: FOR THIS IS THE TESTING OF MEN.
"Testing," in Greek πειρασμός, that is, the proof and examination of men — as if to say: The true way of probing a man's mind, genius, and character is his speech. Therefore before you hear someone speak, do not pass judgment on him or his character. For as gold is tested by the touchstone, so a man is tested by his speech, especially his familiar and frequent or regular speech. For many people compose or contrive their speech for the moment, but in vain — they simulate an excellent character and conceal a wicked one. For "speech" the Greek has λογισμός, that is, consideration, thought, reason, understanding; whence the Tigurina translates: do not praise anyone before reasoning has been undertaken (Vatablus: before thought has been weighed); for this is the testing of men — as if to say: Do not praise anyone before you consider him and carefully weigh his words, countenance, and character with yourself; because this power of consideration has been given to man as an examination and balance by which to test, examine, and probe all men and things.
But Sirach takes λογισμόν in the sense of λόγου, that is, speech, as the Complutensian and Roman editions and the rest translate; or certainly in the sense of διαλογισμοῦ, that is, reasoning, disputation, discourse. For from discourse the mind of each person is best known — since the face is often deceptive, as are stature and bodily form. For many who are distinguished in face, stature, and form have a dull genius, slight judgment, and a limited mind. On the other hand, many who are of small stature, dark countenance, and ugly form nevertheless have great spirits, a keen genius, and outstanding prudence — such as Socrates is reported to have been by Laertius.
Speech, however, is the indicator of the mind — for the mouth is the clasp, indeed the door, of the heart; for through the mouth the heart utters, reveals, and lays open its affections. The mouth, therefore, is the image and mirror of the heart — for just as the word of the mind is the image and mirror of the mind (whence the Son of God, who is the Word of the Father's mind, is called "the image of the Father," Colossians I, verse 15), so likewise the word of the mouth is the mirror and image of the word of the mind. In it, therefore, as in a mirror, behold the mind and the understanding of each person.
Maximus proves this with many maxims of the ancients, in Sermon 15. Solon, he says, used to say that "speech is the image of deeds" (and likewise Democritus called speech εἴδωλον τοῦ βίου, the image of life). Romulus used to say: "Earthen vessels should be tested by sound and striking, but a man by his speech." Oenopidas maintained that as was the nature of each person, such also was his speech. Demonax used to say: "In mirrors one can see the figure of the face, but in conversations the nature and image of the mind. For speech is like a potter of the man, who shapes and brings forth the form of the soul. In no mirror does the figure of the body shine more clearly and expressively than the image of the breast is represented in speech." So says Maximus. The axiom of Socrates, according to Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations V, was: "As the man is, so also will be his speech; and his deeds will be most like his speech, and his life like his deeds." The same Socrates, when a rich man had sent his son to him to have his character examined, and the tutor said: "Father has sent his son to you, O Socrates, so that you might see him" — then Socrates said to the boy: "Speak then, young man, so that we may see you" — signifying that a man's genius shines not so much in his face as in his speech, since speech is the most certain and least deceptive mirror of the soul.
9. IF YOU PURSUE JUSTICE, YOU SHALL ATTAIN IT; AND YOU SHALL PUT IT ON LIKE A ROBE (erroneously in the Speculum of St. Augustine it reads "modesty") OF HONOR AND DWELL WITH IT, AND IT SHALL PROTECT YOU FOREVER, AND IN THE DAY OF RECOGNITION YOU SHALL FIND A FIRM FOUNDATION.
The Greek, in its characteristically concise fashion, has only this: if you pursue justice, you shall attain it and put it on like a full-length tunic of glory. The Syriac: if you seek truth, you shall find it, and you shall put it on like a garment of glory. The Tigurina: if you follow justice, you shall attain it, and you shall put it on like an honorable toga.
Then from the Latin Vulgate he adds: you shall dwell with it, and it shall protect you forever, so that in the time of inquiry you shall find a firm foundation. For "pursue" the Greek has διώκῃς, that is, chase after — with that same zeal, speed, effort, exertion, and constancy with which a dog pursues a hare and does not stop until it catches and seizes it. For in like manner we ought to follow and pursue justice, and say with the Apostle: "But one thing I do — forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians III, 12).
For "justice" the Greek has τὸ δίκαιον, that is, the just — meaning just and holy works that make you just and holy, and clothe and adorn you with habitual justice. Justice, then, is here understood in the general sense as the sum of all virtues, in which the sanctity and perfection of the faithful consists. The poderis is a full-length robe, so called because it hangs from the neck down to the feet and ankles, and therefore encompasses, clothes, protects, adorns, and decorates the whole body of a man. Hence doctors, senators, magistrates, and above all priests are clothed in full-length garments. For the poderis was the vestment of Aaron and the high priests, about which it is said in Wisdom XVIII, verse 24: "In the robe of the poderis that he wore was the whole world, and the glories of the fathers were carved in four rows of stones." See what I said at Exodus XXVIII, 6. Therefore it signifies that justice is like a sacred poderis adorning the just man and, as it were, consecrating him a priest, according to that saying of St. Peter, First Epistle, chapter II, 9: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of His own possession." Justice, then, is the poderis that makes one just and creates a doctor, senator, priest, and pontiff of the heavenly court.
Furthermore, justice clothes and adorns us with a twofold robe: first, with the robe of grace in this life — for grace is a heavenly light that makes the soul radiant and pleasing in the eyes of God and the angels; second, with the robe of glory in heaven — for there all our justice and grace is perfected, and there divine glory will be given and bestowed as a reward for the merits of works of justice. There, then, justice will properly be clothed with the robe of glory, as the Greek and Syriac have. He alludes to Isaiah chapter LXI, verse 10: "Rejoicing I shall rejoice in the Lord, and my soul shall exult in my God, because He has clothed me with the garments of salvation and surrounded me with the vesture of justice, like a bridegroom adorned with a crown, and like a bride adorned with her jewels." See what I said there.
Hence Sirach adds three effects and fruits of this robe and garment of justice, saying first: "And you shall dwell with it" — as if to say: You shall dwell with justice as with a garment, indeed as with a heavenly virgin, and so you shall dwell with divine holiness and with God Himself — for created justice and holiness is a participation in Him, infused by God into holy minds. Second, "it shall protect you forever" against all the temptations of concupiscence, against all the assaults of the devil, against all the deceits, allurements, terrors, and dangers of the world, indeed against the very thunderbolts and lightning of God Himself which He will hurl against the impious, especially on the day of judgment, when He will thunder the dreadful sentence of damnation against them, saying: "Depart, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew XXV). Whence, third: "In the day of recognition" — that is, in the day of judgment and divine examination, when Christ will judge all the deeds of men — "you shall find a firm foundation." For justice will be like a breastplate making your chest firm, so that on that terrible day when all others will tremble at the face of Christ in His wrath and will say to the mountains, "Fall upon us," and to the hills, "Cover us" (Luke XXIII, 30), you will stand firm and unshaken — indeed, full of good hope, joyful and eager, you will await that sentence of blessedness: "Come, blessed of My Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matthew XXV).
Allegorically and tropologically, Palacius understands justice as Christ, and the graces and virtues of Christ. If you keep before your eyes the word of Paul, he says: "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ," you will understand that Christ is the justice which whoever seeks with vows, prayers, and good works will attain. You will also understand that He is the robe of honor — that is, the many-colored and full-length garment with which Joseph was clothed in Genesis XXXVII, 3. You will likewise understand Him to be the lord of the house who will make us dwell with Him; and also the eternal protector, for He will bear us to heaven where He will hide us in the secret of His tabernacle. Finally, He will be the firm foundation on which we shall lean on the day of judgment. The day of judgment is called "the day of recognition" — for then each person will know himself and be known by all. Then Christ will be the firm foundation on which all of us will lean — as many as have sinned but were justified through the redemption that is in Christ.
Behold the Christian clothed outwardly with Christ, who has Christ as an indweller within; who has Christ as a perpetual protector and as the pillar on which he may lean especially on the day of judgment. How far from these ideals are our ways of life! For nothing is less visible in any of us than Christ. So far Palacius.
Anagogically, Rabanus says: "The poderis is a tunic reaching down to the ankles. What then is a full-length tunic, if not a completed action? For just as a tunic that extends to the ankles covers the heel of the body, so a good action covers us before God's eyes all the way to the end of our life. Whence also through Moses the tail of the sacrificial victim was commanded to be offered on the altar, so that we may complete with a persevering end every good work that we begin. Whoever therefore perseveres in good action to the end of life, the Lord will protect him forever; and in the day of recognition — that is, in the day of judgment, when the Lord, coming, will illuminate the hidden things of darkness and will manifest the counsels of hearts — then he will find a firm foundation, because then he will receive the true and firm reward of his justice."
10. BIRDS GATHER TO THEIR LIKE (in Greek καταλύσει, that is, they resort): AND TRUTH RETURNS TO THOSE WHO PRACTICE IT.
"Truth" both speculative (for this comes to those who work at it, that is, who study, labor, and contemplate) and more especially moral and practical — such as, in the practical intellect, ethics and prudence, and in the appetite and will, justice and virtue, that is, the carrying out of ethics and right action according to the dictate of prudence. The former truth is of the mind and speculation; the latter, of the will and action. It is called "truth" because it inclines toward and produces moral truth, which is the morally good; for this is true because it is conformed and proportioned to its rule — namely, the law and will of God. Conversely, vice is called false and falsehood, because it is deformed and dissonant from right reason and its law and rule. Hence in the Scriptures the impious are frequently said to follow vanity and falsehood.
He explains what he said — "If you pursue justice, you shall attain it" — by the fitting simile of birds. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Just as birds of the same kind and color flock together, feed together, dwell together, and fly together, and if they fly away a little, immediately fly back to their companions — as we see cranes flying and feeding with cranes, geese with geese, magpies with magpies, and, as is commonly said, a jackdaw sits by a jackdaw — so likewise truth, that is, prudence, justice, and the virtues, flee from the wicked and turn back toward the good as their like, at least in desire and affection; because the good love them, seek them, and practice them; and because the good congregate with the good, just as the wicked with the wicked, as their like. The good, however, bring with them their goodness and virtue, which they rub off on others, just as the wicked rub off their wickedness and vices.
To this point belongs that passage of Claudian, in the Wedding of Emperor Honorius and Maria:
Palm trees nod toward one another in mutual Alliance, the poplar sighs in response to the poplar's touch. And plane trees whisper to plane trees, and alder to alder.
As if to say: The palm rejoices and grieves with the palm, the poplar with the poplar, the plane tree with the plane tree, the alder with the alder — like with like. How much more should a man rejoice with a man like himself, and grieve with him when he is afflicted? It signifies therefore that just as birds of the same kind gather to their like, and mutually refresh, cheer, embrace, and help one another, so likewise truth and virtue deal familiarly with those devoted to them, live joyfully with them, refresh, embrace, and nourish them, promote them in every good thing, and at last bless them with eternal joy and happiness in heaven. For there truth will, as it were by right of return, "come back" to them — truth which in the hardships of this life and the labors of virtue hides itself and its joyfulness, so as to seem absent from the just and to withdraw from them.
So the Tigurina says: birds attach themselves to their like, and likewise truth approaches those who give it their effort. The Syriac: for a bird dwells among its own kind, and truth goes to those who practice it.
Fittingly, truth and the virtues are compared to birds, because both are light, agile, elevated from the earth, tuneful, lofty, and heavenly — for they sing perpetual praises to God and fly to heaven on swift wings. Thus wisdom and chastity, as Rufinus attests, flew like heavenly birds and maidens to St. Gregory Nazianzen in his dreams, and said to him: "We are your friends, because you have prepared a pleasant dwelling for us in your soul." Thus almsgiving, like a divine bird, flew to St. John the Almsgiver and invited him to love of itself, as Leontius attests in his Life. Thus three maidens — namely poverty, chastity, and obedience — flew to St. Francis, as St. Bonaventure attests in his Life.
Whence mystically Rabanus understands by "birds" the "holy souls of the elect, who by the wings of virtue lift themselves above the company of earthly and carnal persons, and desire to be joined with the holy angels in heavenly joy, to whom they are also united in the future life." Again, just as birds, repelled by those unlike and different from them, return to their like and to those of the same color, so truth and holiness, repelled by the impious and finding no place among them to set its foot — like Noah's dove — returns to the pious who are devoted to it. I gave the underlying reason in chapter XIII, verse 19.
Second, with Jansenius, "truth" here can be understood as uncreated — namely, the equity and justice that is in God. For those devoted to justice approach that truth, and it in turn rewards them; therefore it is said to return to them when it renders to them the rewards of justice that they have merited in this life by practicing it, according to that saying of Christ: "If you abide in My word, you will truly be My disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John VIII). For God and Christ is the very truth of things — namely, true wisdom, true delights, true riches, true honor, true joy, true happiness; all other things are vanity and falsehood — indeed, as Ecclesiastes says in chapter I: "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity."
Morally, Palacius notes that truth and holiness are said to return to the pious when it offers them the opportunity to practice true — that is, pious and holy — works. For from time to time the opportunity to practice them is not given, and then truth seems to flee from the one devoted to it; but soon it again presents itself to him when it suggests a new opportunity for doing good. By this he signifies that we must seize the opportunity for doing good when God offers it — for, as the poet says: Opportunity has hair in front, but is bald behind.
11. THE LION ALWAYS LIES IN WAIT FOR ITS PREY: SO DO SINS FOR THOSE WHO WORK INIQUITIES.
He proves what he said — that truth returns to its devotees and practitioners — by the antithesis of the contrary, namely sin and iniquity. "For its prey" — that is, for the animals and beasts that it hunts. Thus from the Greek you may clearly translate with Vatablus: as the lion lies in wait for the beast, so sin for those who commit injustice. The Syriac: the lion lies in wait for its prey (that is, for beasts to break, tear, and devour); so iniquity for those who commit sins.
Fittingly, just as he compared truth and the virtues to birds, so here he compares falsehood and sin to a fierce and cruel lion, and sinners to the beasts for which the lion lies in wait. This antithesis, then, is between virtue and sin, and it is not single but manifold. First, virtue is a gracious bird that pleasantly dwells with its like — that is, with those endowed with virtue — and gladdens, refreshes, and blesses them; but sin is like a most savage lion that admits no one's friendship or familiar company, but rages against all the beasts it hunts with slaughter and butchery. For although the lion is itself a beast, it nevertheless devours the other beasts. So sin is fatal to the sinner, creating nothing good but all evil — as if it were not of the same kind and similar to him, but altogether degenerate and dissimilar, indeed diametrically opposed and contrary.
Second, just as the lion lies in ambush and attacks beasts and men from ambush, so also sin lies in ambush for the sinner. For it offers him the bait of pleasure, so that it may catch and kill him, just as a fisherman catches and kills a fish with bait, according to Proverbs V: "His own iniquities catch the wicked man, and he is bound with the cords of his sins."
Third, just as the lion kills and devours the beasts it hunts, so sin kills the sinner and makes him the food of death both present and eternal, so that he may burn forever in hell.
Morally, Palacius says: Just as the lion, which is in ambush for hunting, presents itself even to one who suspects nothing of the sort, so sin presents itself to the sinner even when he is not thinking of sin. For everywhere the material for sinning presents itself to the sinner. So conversely, to the man who practices truth, truth itself everywhere offers itself to be practiced; and if sometimes the opportunity for practicing truth flees, it immediately returns. So much does God prepare good things everywhere for the good, and the devil ceaselessly prepares evils for the evil. But with this difference: that sin is a lion devouring the sinner, while truth is all good, blessing the one who practices it.
It is a personification. For sin is here introduced as if it were a person, indeed as if it were a wild beast and a lion lying in ambush for the sinner. "Sin" here should be understood broadly and generally; whence you may descend to particulars under it. First, by "sin" understand habitual sin — that is, the habit of sinning — for this lies in ambush for a man, since it secretly and covertly inclines him to repeat the acts of sin. A drunkard, for example, through frequent drunkenness has contracted a habit by which he is strongly inclined to drinking always; this habit therefore treacherously inclines him even when he is not thinking of it and is, as it were, unaware — to frequent taverns and drink.
Second, by "sin" understand actual sin — that is, the act of sin — for this inclines a man to its repetition. For the experience of pleasure that accompanies the present sin leads him to repeat it, so that through the repetition the pleasure may be renewed, which he experiences in the present and has experienced in the past.
Third, by "sin" understand concupiscence. For this is metonymically called "sin" by the Apostle in Romans VII, and often by St. Augustine and the Doctors, because it is both the effect and the cause of sin. For concupiscence secretly titillates a man and stealthily solicits him to fulfill it in action. Hence it happens that a man, setting aside the judgment of reason, follows it and feeds and delights himself on it, even without thinking and as if unaware — because concupiscence, as it were, steals away his mind, and so catches and maddens him, as if by ambush.
Fourth, by "sin" understand the object of sin — that is, the allurements and alluring appearances of delightful things that entice a man to sin. Such are the beauty of women, which seizes those who gaze at them and draws them to lust; the gleam of wine and a lavish table, which seize the glutton so that he may stuff his belly with them; the splendor of gold, which seizes the greedy man so that he may grasp at it by fair means or foul; the pomp of honor, which seizes the proud man so that he may court it. Here is the deception, here are the ambushes — when companions or concupiscence suggest to a man and say: See how beautiful she is, this one and that one! I do not want you to sin, only to admire her beauty. Taste this wine, to see how sweet it is — I do not want you to drink deeply, only taste it. And so with the rest — for from tasting one cup, with gluttony pulling, one comes to the second, the third, the fourth, and finally to full carousing. The same happens in gazing at women and other alluring objects.
Fifth, by "sin" understand the punishment of sin — for this stands by, as if in ambush, beside the one who sins, just as a magistrate covertly stands by a thief, to catch and punish him in the act of stealing — according to that word of God to Cain, to which Sirach alludes here: "If you do well, will you not be accepted? But if badly, sin will be present immediately at the door" — like a dog and Cerberus barking at you and tearing you apart (Genesis IV, 7). See what I said there. So in chapter XXVII, 31, Sirach says: "Mockery and reproach of the proud — and vengeance like a lion will lie in wait for him."
Finally, by "sin" the devil can be understood — the author of sin — for he lies in ambush for the sinner, to drag him into sin and through it into hell; whence "like a roaring lion he goes about seeking whom he may devour" (I Peter V, 8). In a similar way, by "sin" understand sinners, that is, wicked companions who lie in wait even for a repentant companion, to drag him back to sin and their company, and therefore devise a thousand tricks and traps against him, as daily experience shows. Therefore one who wishes to save his soul must beware of them as of the most cruel lions. In a similar way, procuresses and prostitutes lie in ambush for young men.
Note here: Just as the whole strength of lions is in their eyes, so the whole strength of sin is in the gaze — that is, in seeing and being seen. For this is the occasion and the door of all sin; close this, and you have escaped the ambushes of sin. Hear Pliny, book VIII, chapter XVI, teaching by what method a lion can be conquered, captured, and tamed: "In the reign of Claudius," he says, "chance taught a method of subduing such a beast that would almost shame its name — by a Gaetulian shepherd throwing his cloak against its onrushing attack. This spectacle was immediately transferred to the arena, the great fierceness of the beast becoming torpid in an almost incredible manner when its head was covered, even with a light throw, so that it was subdued without resisting — evidently because all its strength lies in its eyes." And earlier: "When as a mother it fights for its cubs, it is said to fix its gaze on the ground, so as not to be frightened by the hunting spears." And a little before he describes the manner of hunting the lion, saying: "While it pursues, it springs with a leap." So sin and the devil rush upon a man with a sudden leap, to strike him down and lay him flat.
Again, Aristotle, book IX of the History of Animals, chapter XLIV, and from him Pliny: "In the hunt," he says, "while a lion is being watched, it never flees or shows fear; but even if forced to yield by the multitude of hunters, it retreats slowly and step by step, frequently stopping and looking back. But once it finds cover, it withdraws itself as swiftly as possible in flight until it reaches open ground; then again it walks slowly." The devil and wicked companions do exactly the same.
12. A HOLY MAN ABIDES IN WISDOM LIKE THE SUN (constantly shining with the same brightness always): FOR THE FOOL CHANGES LIKE THE MOON.
For "holy," as the Roman and Greek editions read, some read "sensible" — for this is the opposite of "fool." But in this book, as well as in Proverbs, "sensible" and "holy" are the same — for true sense and true prudence are nothing other than virtue and holiness. The words "like the sun" are no longer in the Greek nor in the Syriac; nevertheless St. Augustine reads them so in Epistle 119, chapter V — whence you may conclude that they formerly existed in the Greek.
So the Greek corrected at Rome reads: the discourse of the pious is always wisdom, but the fool changes like the moon — that is, is altered. The Tigurina: the discourse of the pious in wisdom is perpetual as the sun, but the fool varies after the manner of the moon. The Syriac: the discourses of the wise are always in wisdom, and the fool changes like the moon. So also St. Ambrose reads in the passages soon to be cited — from which it is clear that both the Greek and the Syriac restrict this to the speech of the wise and of fools — as if to say: The wise man always speaks wisdom, that is, honorable and holy things; but the fool now belches forth wise and holy things, now foolish — that is, dishonorable and impious — things. For he adapts himself to the occasion and his companions: therefore with the chaste he speaks chastely, with the unchaste unchastely, with the humble humbly, with the proud proudly, with those who curse, by cursing. But the wise man, just as he always has a holy mind, so also a holy tongue: therefore he speaks only chastely, humbly, benevolently, praising and blessing both God and neighbor.
Our translator, however, makes this maxim broader — as if to say: The wise man, that is, the holy man, as long as he remains such, abides in wisdom — that is, in holiness — like the sun, so that he abandons his inner wisdom and holiness under no fear, no allurements, no rewards held out, and he constantly professes it in his outward words and deeds. But the fool, that is, the inconstant and impious man, like the polyp and the moon, changes his mind, and with his mind his tongue — so that now he thinks, proposes, does, and speaks what is wise and holy, and now devises, does, says, and teaches what is foolish and wicked.
Palacius gives the reason: Among the many attributes, he says, that belong to the Lord God, this is nearly the chief one — that He is immutable and perseveres altogether without any change. This greatest prerogative the Lord grants (in their own manner, however) to His saints, so that they are almost not changed. "For whatever befalls the just man will not sadden him" (Proverbs XII). "Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which shall not be moved forever" (Psalm CXXIV). "Great peace have those who love Your law" (Psalm CXVIII). For as St. John says: "Everyone who is born of God cannot sin" (I John III, 9). And he who does not sin is not changed — that is, what the Author says: the holy man is immovable, he does not sin at all, he does not at all impose a stain upon his holiness.
You will say: Did not Samson, David, and Solomon sin? Certainly. Therefore the Author added: "holy in his wisdom" — that is, while he remains in wisdom, "he abides like the sun." If he falls from wisdom and charity, then indeed Lucifer fell from heaven (Isaiah XIV, 12). So also St. John is to be understood: namely, that "he who is born of God," while he preserves the seed of God, "cannot sin." Now, just as God communicates His immutability (in their own way) to holy men, so with this immobility not communicated to fools, they must necessarily vary like the moon. Hence it is clear that the just man can persevere not only for a year without mortal sin, as Scotus said, but even for very many years — for he abides like the sun. Moreover, "wisdom" is here called the holiness of life, because it is true wisdom, to which Christ the true sun of justice is always present. Such an indweller bestows such immobility upon His host; He also bestows upon him that he may be a kind of sun, as we have here — for elsewhere He said: "You are the light of the world," and it is clear that the light of the world is the sun. The sun, therefore, represents God and God's justice communicated by Him to the just. Wherefore St. Dionysius, On the Divine Names, chapter IV, declares that the sun is "a meaningful, express, and evident image of the divine goodness."
And Christ indicates that the sun is a symbol of divinity when He says in Matthew V, 45: "Who makes His sun to rise" — "His," because it is His image.
The moon, however, because it borrows its light from the sun, and because it is nearest to the earth and traverses its small orbit more swiftly, looks upon the sun variously; hence it varies its alternations of light, so that it appears now crescent, now half-full, now full. Hence the moon is so called "because it shines with borrowed light," say the etymologists. The fool also appears thus.
To this point belongs that saying of Cleobulus in Plutarch's Symposium: "Law," he says, "prescribes a measure for the wise. I will tell the foolish a fable that my mother recounted to my brother. She said that the moon had asked its mother to weave it a little tunic that fit; and the mother had replied: How can I do that, when I see you now full, soon waned to crescents, and again as a half-disc? So also, my dear Chersia, for a foolish and vicious man there is no measure of wealth." In this way Muhammad the false prophet was a lunatic — that is, epileptic, and changeable and inconstant — who accordingly fabricates in the Quran that he restored a portion of the moon that had fallen from the sky back to the moon and the heavens.
Again, the moon, when it shines for us, does not shine for heaven and the heavenly beings — because it is not illuminated on its upper part but on its lower. And as St. Gregory of Nyssa says in his book On the Soul and the Resurrection, and from him our Pineda on Job XXV, verse 5, number 4, the moon now receives the rays of the sun from behind, now from the front and face turned toward us. Thus indeed things that seem most beautiful to us are dark and unilluminated in the sight of the supreme light; and those who are considered holiest by human judgment are sometimes impure before God. Therefore the Sage compares the fool with the moon, who changes like the moon. For when the fool seeks to shine and be brilliant before men, he loses his light from the upper part — that is, before the sight of God. And also this: the moon shines most brightly for us when it is farthest from the sun, but is darkened when it approaches the sun, as the philosophers and astronomers teach. So indeed, the more someone approaches the divine light, the less brilliant he will appear, and therefore, if he withdraws from it, he will have correspondingly less light — even though before men he may seem to shine greatly.
Third, the moon is a sign of love and is invoked by lovers, because it presides over night and darkness, and over those pleasures that the foolish and carnal seek and practice in darkness. Fourth, the moon appears to our eyes to grow when it recedes from the sun, but seems to diminish when it approaches the sun from another direction. So also the fool and the carnal person shines and is celebrated on earth when, like the moon with its face turned toward earth, he recedes from God and pursues earthly honors and pomp; but when he spurns those things, he approaches God. So St. Augustine says in Epistle 119, whose words I shall presently recite.
Fifth, the moon — as attested by Hippocrates in his book On the Signs of Diseases, and Galen at the beginning of his work on critical days — because it undergoes frequent changes and eclipses, makes people unstable, inconstant in purpose, delighting in various pursuits, with varied and defective or squinting eyes, quick in movement and change. So also those over whom the moon of folly and carnal love has dominion become fickle, versatile, inconstant, lunatic. They are therefore like the gem called selenite, from σελήνη, as if "lunar" from the moon — which, as Pliny says in book XXXVI, chapter X: "Translucent with a honey-colored brightness from a white base, it contains the image of the moon, and reproduces its number of daily waxings and wanings." For in a similar way lunatics imitate and take on the moon's variations.
Therefore human joys and the festivals of carnal people are nothing other than feasts of the New Moon — that is, of the new moon, which grows quickly but shortly after begins to wane. And so that the noblest and wisest of the Romans might keep this before their eyes, they wore an image of the moon on their shoes — so that this symbol of inconstant nobility and excellence, always hastening toward its end with a change for the worse, might keep them mindful of it, as attested by Plutarch, Roman Questions LXXVI, and Rhodiginus, book XX, chapter XXVIII.
Wherefore St. Ambrose, Hexaemeron IV, chapter VIII: "The fool," he says, "changes like the moon; and therefore the wise man does not change with it, but will remain with the sun. Hence the moon is not a participant in foolishness, because the moon does not change as the fool does (lightly, rashly, and without cause), but the fool changes like the moon" — as if to say: The moon is not similar to the fool, nor foolish, but wise, because it changes with reason and cause. But the fool foolishly imitates the moon, because he changes without cause, lightly and foolishly, like the moon — which, however, changes only by great design and prudently, according to the motions and laws prescribed for it by God and nature.
Whence, explaining, he adds: "Finally, the seed of the just, like the perfect moon, remains forever, and is a faithful witness in heaven" (Psalm LXXXVIII). "For it is one thing to fulfill a ministry, another to be carried about by one's temperament and not to have a fixed opinion due to weakness of mind" (as the fool does not). "The moon labors for you and is subject to the will of God. For the creature was subjected to vanity not willingly, but on account of Him who subjected it in hope" (Romans VIII). "She therefore does not change willingly; you change willingly. She groans and is in travail in her changes; you do not understand and frequently congratulate yourself. She awaits your redemption, so that she may be freed from the common servitude of all creation; you bring hindrance both to your own redemption and to her liberty. It is therefore your foolishness, not hers, that while you are being waited for and do not convert even late, she too still undergoes change. Therefore do not judge the moon by the eye of your body, but by the keenness of your mind. The moon wanes in order to fill the elements."
Then, mystically applying the moon's changes to Christ, the Church, and the Saints, who are most wise, he says: "This is truly a great mystery. He bestowed this upon her who bestowed grace upon all. He emptied her so that He might fill her — He who also emptied Himself so that He might fill all. For He emptied Himself so that He might descend to us; He descended to us so that He might ascend for all. For He ascended," he says, "above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things" (Ephesians IV). "And so He who had come emptied filled the Apostles from His fullness. Whence one of them says: For of His fullness we have all received" (John I). "Therefore the moon proclaimed the mystery of Christ. Not insignificant is she in whom He placed His sign; not insignificant is she who bears the figure of the beloved Church, which the Prophet signifies, saying: In His days shall arise justice and abundance of peace, until the moon is exalted" (Psalm LXXI). "And in the Canticle, the Lord says of His bride: Who is she that looks forth like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, chosen as the sun?" (Canticles VI).
"And rightly beautiful as the moon is the Church, which has shone throughout the whole world, and illuminating the darkness of this age says: The night has passed, and the day has drawn near" (Romans XIII). "Beautifully he says: Looking forth — as if looking down upon her own from above, as you have: The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men. Looking forth therefore, the Church, like the moon, has frequent failings and risings; but through her failings she has grown, and has deserved to be enlarged by them, since she is diminished by persecutions and crowned by the martyrdoms of her confessors. This is the true moon, which borrows for herself the light of immortality and grace from the perpetual light of her brother. For the Church shines not by her own light but by the light of Christ, and draws her splendor from the Sun of justice, so that she may say: 'I live, yet no longer I; but Christ lives in me.' Blessed indeed are you who have merited so great a distinction! Whence I would call you blessed not for your new moons but as a type of the Church — for in the former you serve, in the latter you are loved."
The same St. Ambrose, on Psalm XXXVI, at the verse "The mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom," says: "The discourse of the just is always in wisdom; but the fool changes like the moon — that is, he frequently varies and does not persevere in his opinion, and seems to shed light as if in darkness, yet not hold it." The same, in Sermon 4, rebuking the superstition of the people who thought that the waning moon was laboring and in danger of falling from the sky, and therefore tried to animate and help it by shouting: "Among you," he says, "the moon is accustomed to labor only at evening hours, when the belly is stuffed with a lavish supper, when the head is moved by larger cups. At that time, then, the moon labors among you — when wine is also laboring. At that time, I say, the orb of the moon is disturbed among you by incantations, when your eyes are also disturbed by cups. How then, drunkard, can you see what is happening in heaven around the moon, when you do not see what is happening on earth around you? This is exactly what holy Solomon says: 'The fool changes like the moon.' You change like the moon when, being foolish and senseless at its motion, you who were a Christian begin to be sacrilegious — for sacrilege is committed against the Creator when weakness is attributed to the creature. You change like the moon so that you who a moment before shone with the devotion of faith, afterward fail with the weakness of faithlessness. You change like the moon when your brain is emptied of wisdom just as the moon's brightness is emptied — and the darkest shadows of the mind invade you."
"And would that, O fool, you might change as the moon does! For she quickly returns to her fullness; you do not convert to wisdom even late. She swiftly gathers again the light she had lost; you do not receive back even tardily the faith you denied. Your change, then, is graver than the moon's. The moon suffers the loss of light; you, the loss of salvation. How well, then, is it written of the wise man: 'And he will remain with the sun!' For the wise man remains with the sun — that is, with the constancy of faith he remains with the Savior." And further: "Therefore the moon is not changed from its state willingly; you are changed from your understanding willingly. She is led to her diminishment by her condition; you are dragged to your detriment by your will. I do not wish, therefore, brother, that you be like the moon when it wanes; but be like it when it is full and perfect. For it is written of the just man: 'Like the perfect moon forever, and a faithful witness in heaven.'"
On the contrary, the wise and holy man shines and stands firm like the sun. Receive the analogies between the sun and the wise man, the sun and holiness, the sun and charity.
First, the sun always has the same face, light, motion, color, and bearing — and so does the just man.
Second, the sun is not obscured by smoke or clouds — nor is the just man by fear, desire, or other passions.
Third, the sun stands far above the earth — and so the just man despises earthly things, his mind fixed in heaven.
Fourth, the sun equally spreads its rays upon all, good and bad — and so the just man does good to all, friends and enemies alike.
Fifth, the sun moves at every nod from God, revolves and revolves again — and so does the just man.
Sixth, the sun is 160 times larger and wider than the whole earth — so the just man is so broad in charity that his embrace encompasses the whole world.
Seventh, the sun is greater than the stars — so the holy man surpasses the rest by the splendor of his holiness.
Eighth, the sun is most swift, because in any given hour it covers one million and one hundred forty thousand miles, as I showed at Genesis I, 14. So also the just man is swift and most agile in every service of God.
Thus St. Antony, according to St. Athanasius, radiated in his face like the sun, so that by this serenity and light of countenance he was recognized by all, even by those who did not know him. And this face of his was always the same, and remained constant in adversity as in prosperity, before enemies as before friends. Such should the wise and holy man be: whatever others may clamor against him, detract, praise, or mock him, etc. — let him remain consistent and stand firm like the sun, and show this sun-like countenance to all, even to those who slander him, and sprinkle them with the rays of his light and charity, so that he may make friends out of enemies.
Do you want archetypal examples of the wise man shining constantly like the sun? Receive them. The first is assigned by St. Augustine, Epistle 119, chapter V, where he says the sun is Christ, and the moon is Adam and his followers: "The wise man," he says, "remains like the sun; but the fool changes like the moon. And who is the wise one who remains, if not that Sun of justice of whom it is said: 'The Sun of justice has risen for me'; and of whose not having risen for them the impious will say, lamenting on the last day: 'The light of justice did not shine for us,' and 'The Sun of justice did not rise for us'" (Wisdom V). For God makes this visible sun, seen by the eyes of the flesh, rise upon both the good and the evil, and He also sends rain upon both the just and the unjust.
And fitting similitudes of invisible things are always drawn from visible things. Who then is that fool who changes like the moon, if not Adam, in whom all have sinned? For the human soul, withdrawing from the Sun of justice — that is, from that inner contemplation of immutable truth — converts all its powers to earthly things, and becomes more and more obscured in its interior and higher faculties. But when it begins to return to that immutable wisdom, the more it approaches Him with the affection of piety, the more the outer man is corrupted — but the inner man is renewed from day to day, and all that light of genius which tended toward lower things is turned toward higher things, and in a certain way is taken from earthly concerns, so that it may more and more die to this world, and its life may be hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians III).
"He changes for the worse, then, by advancing toward outward things and casting away his inmost self in his way of life — and this seems better to the earth, that is, to those who think earthly thoughts, when the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, and he who acts wickedly is blessed" (Psalm IX). "But he changes for the better when he gradually turns his attention and glory from the earthly things that appear in this world, and converts from lower to higher things — and this seems worse to the earth, that is, to those who think earthly thoughts."
The second example of a wise person radiant as the sun is the Blessed Virgin, about whom hear St. Bernard, in his sermon on Apocalypse chapter XII: A great sign appeared in heaven — a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet. "Indeed," he says, "she is the one who put on, as it were, another sun." And shortly after: "The moon is wont to designate not only the defect of corruption but also the folly of the mind, and sometimes the Church of this time — the former on account of mutability, the latter on account of the splendor received from elsewhere. Both (so to speak) moons are fittingly placed under Mary's feet, though in different ways. For the fool changes like the moon, but the wise man remains like the sun. In the sun, indeed, both fervor and brightness are stable; in the moon, only brightness — and that altogether changeable and uncertain, never remaining in the same state. Rightly, therefore, is Mary declared to be clothed with the sun, she who penetrated the most profound abyss of divine Wisdom beyond what can be believed — so that, as far as the condition of a creature without personal union allows, she seems to be immersed in that inaccessible light. By that fire, indeed, the lips of the prophet are purged; by that fire the Seraphim are set ablaze. But Mary merited far otherwise — not to be touched, as it were, in summary fashion, but rather to be covered on every side and suffused, and to be, as it were, enclosed by that very fire. Most brilliant indeed, but also most ardent, is the garment of this woman — all of whose attributes are known to be so excellently illuminated that nothing in her, I do not say dark, but even dim, or less than bright — nay, not even anything tepid or less than most fervent — may be suspected."
All folly, moreover, is far beneath her feet, so that she is entirely removed from the number of foolish women and the company of the foolish virgins. Indeed, that one fool — the prince of all folly — who truly changed like the moon and lost his wisdom in his beauty, trampled and crushed under Mary's feet, suffers a wretched slavery.
The third example of a holy person shining like the sun is St. John the Baptist, about whom hear the same St. Bernard in his sermon on the Nativity of St. John: "He was a lamp burning and shining. A great testimony, my brothers — for great is he to whom it is given, but greater is he who gives it. He (he says) was a lamp burning and shining. For merely to shine is vanity, merely to burn is too little; to burn and to shine is perfection. Hear what Scripture says: The wise man remains like the sun, but the fool changes like the moon. Because the moon shines without fervor: now it appears full, now small, now not at all. For borrowed light never remains in the same state, but grows, wanes, is attenuated, is annihilated, and utterly disappears. So those who have placed their consciences on the lips of others are now great, now small, now nothing — according as the tongues of flatterers may please to blame or to praise. But the brightness of the sun is fiery, and when it burns more keenly, it also appears more brilliant to the eyes. So the inner ardor of the wise man shines outwardly, and if he is not given both, he always takes care to burn more — so that his Father, who sees in secret, may reward him. Woe to us, brothers, if we have only given light!"
Furthermore, from a physical and medical standpoint, these words — "the fool changes like the moon" — are explained thus by Franciscus Valesius, De Sacra Philosophia, chapter LXXI — as if to say: The senseless and foolish who are not of sound mind and brain are made worse by the alternations and changes of the moon, and hence are called "lunatics" — that is, melancholics, maniacs, epileptics. Whence some of these are more agitated, go mad, and rave during the full moon, others during the new moon. For the moon, on account of its power of moistening, greatly alters and changes the brain of such people; therefore the affliction of the brain increases along with the waxing moon. Sirach alludes to this; but through it he intends to signify something else literally — namely, that the fool in his willing, acting, and speaking is changeable and inconstant like the moon. For the moon never wears the same face, since it appears now crescent, now gibbous, now half, now full. Hence in Greek it is called μήνη by antiphrasis, ἀπό τοῦ μένειν — that is, from "remaining" — because it never remains the same. So too the fool. On the contrary, a holy man abides in wisdom like the sun.
Whence Aristotle, book VII of the Ethics, says: A good man is always like himself and does not change his ways; but the vicious and foolish man does not seem to be the same in the morning as in the evening. And Seneca, Epistle 47: "Good morals are pleased with themselves and remain; wickedness is fickle, it is frequently changed — not into something better, but into something different." St. Ambrose, chapter XII of On Noah's Ark: "The opinion of the wise man," he says, "is strong and fixed; that of the fool wavers with uncertain counsel, now bent by hatred, now changeable by profit, and misshapen by the variety of humors, staining the soul like a leprous body and frequently mixing harmful thoughts with wholesome ones." I have condensed St. Ambrose's words into a few.
Symbolically and anagogically, St. Caesarius, the brother of St. Gregory Nazianzen, at the end of Dialogue I, beautifully shows the moon to be a mirror and image of man, who now grows, now diminishes, now lives, now dies, now rises again. "The moon," he says, "is an evident image of our nature — being born, growing, full, decreasing, waning, setting, yet not utterly perishing. In like manner we too are born, grow to fullness, pass into old age — and then we fail in the vigor of our face, decrease in the elegance of complexion and the grace of bloom in the face, exchanging ruddiness for pallor. We are diminished in bodily strength, beginning to walk bent over and to lean on a staff, inclined toward the earth, and by our very posture calling out to it: 'Behold, I am here.' We die and with our bodies return to the earth — yet not perishing in spirit, but shortly after laying aside the cloak of flesh, the soul is clothed again. For I am not the body, but I am the soul, and this body is mine, along with whatever is born from the earth; whence this too is born again after its death, like the moon which, as it were coming back to life, comes into view for all. For we too, perishing in the grave, shall rise again, as if reborn, according to that divine word: 'When the Son of Man comes in the regeneration' — by which the time of our resurrection is signified."
Tropologically, by this maxim we are admonished to persevere in wisdom and virtue and to be constant — for this is the sign of true and solid virtue, just as, on the contrary, to fail in holiness when temptation comes is a sign that it was not true — that is, not solid and well-founded. The holy man, therefore, constant in his holiness, is like the sun, indeed like an angel, and a kind of earthly god — and, as someone has said, "like a God walking upon the earth, and a holy angel in the flesh." For God is the uncreated sun and the Father of lights, "with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration" (James I). See, therefore, how the angels conduct themselves in assumed flesh and are not changed by the flesh, but remain as angels in angelic purity, wisdom, and constancy — and imitate them, for as to the soul you are an angel. See how God incarnate — namely Christ — dwelt among men so as to contract from men no vice, no mutability, but remained in His substance God by nature incorruptible, immutable in quality — and imitate Him.
Again, just as the sun constantly ascends to its full and noonday light, so also the just man in wisdom and truth, according to Proverbs XVIII: "The path of the just proceeds like a shining light, and grows until the perfect day."
The reason is: first, because virtue becomes easier and more delightful through daily exercise; second, because one act of virtue invites and elicits another and another; and third, because the powers of both mind and body are increased and grow through exercise. Thus Milo of Croton increased his bodily strength by exercising it — for in order to carry off the palm of strength in the public contest, he first carried a calf; then by carrying it every day, as the calf grew, his strength grew too, so much so that when the calf finally grew into a full-sized ox, he carried the same animal as an ox. So St. Dominic Loricatus led a wonderfully austere life in fasting, wearing an iron cuirass that he continually wore against his bare flesh, and with sharp and prolonged disciplines. When asked how he could bear such things, he replied: "I began with small things, and constantly advanced step by step to greater ones, which are now as easy for me as the small things once were. For labor, he said, feeds on labor, vigils beget vigils, and the body, in which strength is gradually nourished, is thereby also strengthened." So Simeon Stylites ascended step by step, until at last he stood on a column in the open air, day and night, for 50 years (or, according to Baronius, 80), perpetually praying, or instructing and exhorting others to virtue, scarcely eating, scarcely sleeping.
For attaining this constancy of standing firm and progressing in wisdom and virtue, the first incentive is to fix the mind on God. For this is the first act of constancy and perseverance, from which all other goods follow. For whoever has his mind fixed on God is bent by no allurements, shaken by no threats or terrors: "He who clings to God is one spirit with Him; he who clings to the rock is one stone," says St. Bernard, Sermon 8 on Psalm "He Who Dwells."
The second incentive is an immense love of God. For this arouses the lover to labor and suffer anything constantly for His service. For Paul, armed with charity, confidently exclaimed: "Who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine? etc. I am certain that neither death nor life," etc. (Romans VIII).
The third is a great desire to make progress in virtue. "Beware," says Gregory Nazianzen in his Distichs, "lest you ever stand still on the way of virtue. For I consider it the same for you, who have departed from a vicious life, to stand still as to slip into the depths of vice."
The fourth is to consider how great and mighty are the works that have been accomplished, and are still being accomplished, through constancy. Consider Paul, who taught and converted almost all nations, and is therefore called the Doctor of the Gentiles. By what means did he do this? By labor and constancy. Whence, captured in Jerusalem, he heard from God: "Be constant; for as you have testified of Me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome" (Acts XXIII, 11). And while preaching in Corinth, he heard from the same God: "Do not be afraid, but speak, and do not be silent; because I am with you, and no one shall be set against you to harm you; for I have many people in this city" (Acts XVIII, 10).
Consider St. Athanasius, who bore the burden of the Church and the furies of the Arians, and indeed the attacks of virtually the entire world, for 46 years — and by that means preserved both the faith of the Homoousios and the integrity of the Church. By what means? By adamantine constancy. Consider Simeon Stylites, already mentioned, who, standing on his column continually, was a type and image of constancy. What did this man not accomplish by his prayers, miracles, counsels, and example? Read his Life in Theodoret and other sources, and you will be astounded.
The fifth is to consider that all our labor and pain is brief: "For our light and momentary tribulation works in us an eternal weight of glory" (II Corinthians IV). By this consideration St. Antony exhorted his followers to constancy in the rigor of so austere a life, as St. Athanasius attests in his Life. By the same reasoning, Barlaam in Damascene's story exhorts Josaphat to constancy in the religious life, and arms him against the temptation of the length of the way and of penance, saying: "Think that today you began to serve God, and today you will finish." St. Athanasius, when Julian the Apostate was seizing the empire and therefore all Christians were struck with fear, exclaimed: "Be of good courage — it is only a little cloud, which will soon vanish when the sun shines." So Sozomen, book VI, chapter XXVI. St. Polycarp, when the proconsul Herod threatened him with fire unless he would renounce Christ, said: "You threaten me with this fire that burns for a moment and is shortly extinguished; but you do not know that the fire of the future judgment will be eternal, prepared for perpetual punishments." So Eusebius, book XIV of his History, chapter V.
The sixth is to invoke the angel of constancy, namely St. Gabriel, whose name means "strength of God" or "God is strong" — both because he is most constant, whence Daniel portrays him thus in chapter X, 5: "A man clothed in linen, and his loins girded with fine gold; and his body was like chrysolite, and his face like the appearance of lightning, and his eyes like a burning lamp; and his arms, and all that was below down to the feet, like the appearance of glowing bronze" — and because he has been given to us by God as the guardian of fortitude and constancy, to strengthen our weakness and inconstancy, as he strengthened Daniel's, saying in verse 19: "Do not fear, man of desires; peace be to you. Take courage and be strong." The same angel, as it seems, strengthened Judas Maccabeus and his few companions to fight and conquer against the army of Lysias — that is, against 80,000 foot soldiers and a great cavalry force. "There appeared," it says, "leading them a horseman in white garments, with golden arms, brandishing a spear. Then all together blessed the merciful Lord, and their spirits were strengthened — ready to penetrate not only men but the fiercest beasts and walls of iron. They went forth ready, having a helper from heaven and the Lord having mercy upon them. Rushing upon the enemy in the manner of lions, they struck down eleven thousand foot soldiers and sixteen hundred cavalry."
six hundred; and they put them all to flight." What more do you want? My body is in your power; but my mind you will find subject to me, not to you." So Aeneas Sylvius, book III, On the Deeds of Alfonso.
Victor, proconsul of Carthage, when solicited to embrace Arianism, said: "Tell your king to subject me to fires, to cast me to beasts, to torture me with every kind of torment; if I consent, then in vain was I baptized in the Catholic Church. For if this one present life alone existed, and we did not hope for another which truly is eternal, I would not have acted so for a little while, and gloried in temporal things." So Victor, book III of the Vandal War.
St. Basil, when the prefect of the Emperor Valens threatened him with death unless he obeyed the Arian Valens, calmly and fearlessly replied: "Would that I had some worthy gift to offer to the one who would more quickly release Basil from the burden of this body." And when the following night was given him to deliberate: "Tomorrow," he said, "I will be the same as I am now; would that you would not change!" So the Ecclesiastical History, book XI, chapter IX.
St. Basil's companion, St. Gregory Nazianzen, says in his Distichs: "Whoever trusts in things that come and go in turn, he trusts in a perennial flowing stream. Day passes you on to day, and all turns most lightly; but the resolve of a steadfast man has an everlasting day." And shortly after: "What truly pleases me is what has struck the deepest roots in the soul." These indeed are heroes, worthy of heaven, as of the city of the brave; of whom Isaiah says in chapter LXI: "They shall be called in it the strong ones of justice, the planting of the Lord unto glorification."
This parable, similar to a fable, is adorned by Cyril with the festive fable of the galaxias, asbestos, sinochitis, and carbuncle, in book I of his Moral Apologues, chapter 26, whose title is "In good things let constancy strengthen you": "The galaxias, asbestos, and synochites, three gems gathered together, began to dispute about their virtues. First the galaxias spoke: 'Although I do not possess the hardness of a diamond, I nevertheless surpass it in this: that by the vigor of my most tenacious property, I am in no way heated by fire.' Then the asbestos, claiming superiority over it, added: 'I am indeed endowed with a nobler quality, because by inseparably retaining an oily moisture, once kindled I can scarcely or never be extinguished.' To these the synochites added: 'As I see it, you boast of your contrary immutability; yet I consider myself no less admirable, because by a wonderful variety I grow and diminish daily with the moon.' But since he who commends himself is not thereby approved, it was not unfitting that they chose to hear the opinion of the radiant carbuncle, who, being well-informed about the case, with an equal balance of reason, soon authoritatively settled the dispute of the contenders, and said: 'Since the habitual quality of contraries is more excellent than the privative, to be heated is indeed to be changed for the better, but to be cooled is to be turned for the worse; moreover, to be in a continual flux is nothing
to be; for according to this, it is not to be. Whence every thing, insofar as it has of change, has that much of non-being. I say therefore: Never to be advanced to what is better is a harsh wickedness; just as never to be turned to what is worse is constancy; but to be always changing is a mark of weakness and softness.' Then confirming the same point with the example of the reed, the chameleon, the sky, and melody, he adds: 'An empty reed is always tossed about by the inflow of breath from one side and the other, and the wave of the sea, conflicting with the wind, is continually scattered in fluid motion. Have you not heard what the shrewd fox once replied to the chameleon, boasting of having acquired a golden color? For where there is no stability, the being is mere shadow, and the glory is not true. Do not all things have as much of nobility as they have of stability; and in every genus, are not the first principles those which are firmly established? Moreover, nature, which is governed by the order of wisdom, in its necessary conditions being a lover of stability, is not changed without a foundation of uniformity. For the sky always revolves regularly, and the seasons and ages follow one another uniformly. Indeed, even the harmony of melody and the flow of eloquence, although they delight, nevertheless without the correspondence of a fitting stability, they do not please the sense of a constant soul. Just as therefore nothing is more mobile in evils than the wise man, so nothing is more firmly established in goods.' With these words the dispute was settled."
13. IN THE MIDST OF THE SENSELESS KEEP YOUR WORD FOR THE RIGHT TIME: BUT IN THE MIDST OF THE THOUGHTFUL BE CONSTANT.
Some read "of those thinking on the law of God"; but the Roman and Greek editions delete "the law of God." Now "of those thinking," that is, of the meditative, that is, of the prudent; for thinking and meditation beget prudence.
He said, in the preceding verse, that the speech of the holy man is always in wisdom: now, lest anyone infer from this that the holy man ought to display his wisdom everywhere, he limits that here, and teaches where one should display it and where one should keep silent, as if saying: While you are among the senseless and foolish, do not bring forth words of wisdom; and, as Christ says: Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not cast pearls before swine; but keep them for the right time, so that you may bring them forth opportunely, namely when it will be profitable to have said them. Meanwhile, seek the company and familiarity of prudent and serious men, who speak only of serious matters, first long and much considered and well weighed; for these will eagerly receive the teaching of your wisdom, and you in turn will hear and learn many profitable things from them. This is what Solomon says, Ecclesiastes III: "A time to speak, and a time to be silent;" what that time is, Sirach explains here, namely, that the time for silence is when you are among fools; but the time for speaking is when you are among the wise. Whence the Zurich Bible translates: "when about to intervene among the foolish, observe the opportunity" (that is, when a suitable occasion is given, fittingly and graciously show them and correct their foolishness); "but frequently visit the company of the wise"; Vatablus: "among the foolish serve the time, but among the wise speak frequently"; the Syriac: "among fools one must observe the time, and among the wise, speak always."
14. THE TALE OF SINNERS IS HATEFUL, AND THEIR LAUGHTER IS IN THE DELIGHTS (so the Roman and Greek editions; therefore Jansenius and others who commonly read "offenses" are wrong) OF SIN.
"Of sinners," that is, of those given over to sins, who are accustomed to sin frequently, who practice sins habitually and delight and exult in them. In Greek it is moron, that is, "of fools." For the sinner, while he sins, is most foolish, and sin is the height of folly; because he prefers and chooses the creature over the Creator, earth over heaven, hell over paradise. For "hateful" the Greek has prosochthisma, that is, offense, stumbling block, annoyance, weariness, hatred, execration. Whence the Complutensian editors translate: "the tale of fools is a burden, and their laughter is in the food of sin"; the Zurich Bible: "the tale of fools gives offense, and their laughter is wicked pleasure"; the Syriac: "the tales of fools are hateful, and their laughter is bitterness (or impudence)." The sense is, as if saying: To the wise, that is to the just, "the tale of sinners is hateful" and burdensome, "and," that is because, "their laughter" is "in the delights of sin"; because, namely, with laughter and joy they recount their lusts and other abominable delights of sins, and exult in them, which the just abhor. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, according to that passage of Proverbs II: "They rejoice when they have done evil, and exult in the worst things." Now what is more grievous to a chaste and holy man than to hear incestuous, blasphemous, and impious things, and thus nothing but offenses against God? Whence David, Psalm CXVIII: "I saw," he says, "the transgressors, and I pined away"; and: "Zeal for You has consumed me." For the impious are driven by the spirit not of God, but of the devil, of lust, of pride, etc.: for he dominates them; he speaks through their mouths things proud, lustful, and diabolical; he exercises and works similar things through their hands and members.
15. SPEECH THAT SWEARS MUCH WILL MAKE THE HAIR STAND ON END: AND ITS IRREVERENCE IS A STOPPING OF THE EARS.
By example he teaches how hateful the tale of sinners is; because, namely, among the other sins that they commit, one is that they frequently, indeed every third word, swear and forswear, and this often by the wounds of Christ and the most sacred things. Which oaths and curses and other similar things, which they utter irreverently and shamelessly, strike horror into the just who hear them: so much so that they repeatedly stop their ears out of shame and horror, lest they be struck and polluted by such unspeakable words. For "irreverence," St. Augustine reads by diaeresis "in reverence," that is, out of shame and modesty; for in the Scriptures "reverence" often signifies this. In Greek it is mache, that is, quarrel, strife, contention, fight. Whence the Complutensian editors translate: "the speech of one who swears much will make the hair stand on end, and their strife (Roman edition: quarrel) is a stopping of the ears"; the Zurich Bible: "the speech of one who swears frequently strikes horror, and the contention of such people deafens the ears." He alludes to the custom of the Jews, who,
upon hearing a blasphemy, whether real or perceived, would stop their ears, to show that they execrated it, as is clear from Acts VII, 56. Whence Palacius takes "irreverence" to mean blasphemy. For the Jews so abhorred blasphemy that they did not even dare to utter its name, but would designate it by another more respectable term, or describe it by a periphrasis.
16. THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD IN THE QUARREL OF THE PROUD, AND THEIR CURSING IS GRIEVOUS TO HEAR.
By another example he shows how hateful the tale of sinners is, as if saying: Fools by speaking stir up strife and quarrels, from which follow fights, duels, and killings, "and cursing"—in Greek dioloidoresis, that is, reviling—"of those, is grievous to hear," that is, it is heavy and burdensome to hear; in Greek mochthera, that is, wicked, evil, shameful, insolent, loathsome, dark, toilsome, annoying, miserable. The Zurich Bible: "the quarrel of the proud is a shedding of blood, and their insults are grievous to hear." The Syriac substitutes for this verse and the preceding one: "The gift of the wicked makes the hairs of the head stand on end, and he who sheds blood will listen to the words of the wicked. Do not sit among the wicked, and with the mocker stop your ears."
THIRD PART OF THE CHAPTER, WHICH TEACHES HOW HARMFUL IS THE REVELATION OF A SECRET.
17. HE WHO REVEALS THE SECRETS OF A FRIEND LOSES TRUST, AND WILL NOT FIND A FRIEND TO HIS LIKING.
"Trust," that is, faithfulness, both real in itself and as esteemed by the friend and others, as if saying: He who reveals the secrets of a friend loses faithfulness, because he ceases to be faithful to his friend and begins to be unfaithful and treacherous; therefore in turn he will lose "trust," that is, the opinion, credit, and reputation of faithfulness with his friend, so that the friend will no longer have trust in him, nor believe him; but will despise him as treacherous and a betrayer, and therefore will break off his friendship, and from a friend will become an adversary and enemy. For the foundation of friendship is trust, or faithfulness; if you overturn that, you overturn all friendship: "And you will not find a friend to your liking," that is, according to your wish and desire, according to the judgment of your soul. For no prudent person will want as a friend someone whom he has at some time experienced or heard to have been unfaithful to a friend and to have revealed his secrets. So the Zurich Bible: "the revealer of secrets," it says, "loses trust, and will not find a friend according to his heart's desire"; the Syriac: "he who reveals a secret will lose his trust, and will not find for himself a friend according to his heart"; indeed by God's just judgment he will be repaid in kind, so that, just as he did not keep faith with his friend, so no friend will keep it with him. He alludes to Proverbs XI, 13: "He who walks deceitfully reveals secrets; but he who is faithful in spirit conceals a friend's confidence." And chapter XXV, verse 9: "Discuss your case with your friend, and do not reveal a secret to a stranger." For, as St. Augustine says, or whoever is the author of the book On Friendship, chapter VII: "In the revelation of secrets among friends there is nothing more shameful, nothing more execrable, leaving nothing of love or grace among friends; but filling everything with the bitterness of indignation, and sprinkling everything with the gall of hatred and sorrow. Whence Solomon: He who reveals the secrets of a friend loses trust. For what is more unhappy than he who loses trust and languishes in despair? Whence to reveal the secrets of a friend is the despair of an unhappy soul." Indeed, Isocrates to Demonicus: "Deposits of words," he says, "must be guarded more diligently than deposits of money."
The reason a priori is that concealing the secrets of neighbors is a necessary thing for men to live in peace and tranquility, and for the mutual intercourse of men to be safely maintained. For if men
Which opinion Anaxander, the Greek comic poet, expresses thus: He to whom words are entrusted, to whom a deposit is given; If he uncovers them, he is unjust, or he is a babbler, If for hope of gain, this one is unjust, or a babbler. But both must equally be considered wicked.
Hence the Egyptians, as Diodorus Siculus writes, book II, chapter II, ordered the tongue to be cut out of anyone who had revealed secrets; the Romans, moreover, considered such a person to be burned alive or hung on a fork. So Paul, in the book Si quis, section De panis.
18 AND 19. LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR, AND BE JOINED TO HIM IN FAITHFULNESS. BUT IF YOU HAVE LAID BARE HIS SECRETS, DO NOT PURSUE AFTER HIM.
So the Roman edition reads "persequeris" (you will pursue), not "persequaris" (you should pursue), as others have; granted that the sense of both readings is the same, as if saying: If you love your neighbor—in Greek philon, that is, friend—be joined to him through faithfulness, so that you keep faith with him, and faithfully keep his secrets silent, and guard them with you; for if you have laid them bare and revealed them, he will flee you and your friendship certainly and irrevocably; therefore you will pursue him in vain to recall him to friendship; for he will remain turned away from you and inexorable. The Zurich Bible: "See that you love your friend, and show yourself faithful to him (others: make firm your faithfulness with him); but if you blurt out his secrets, you will not catch up with him afterward." The Syriac, however, inverts the statement: "Test your companion, and trust him; but if he reveals the secret of trust, do not follow after him." He alludes to that passage in Proverbs XX, 19: "Do not associate with him who reveals mysteries (secrets), and walks deceitfully, and opens wide his lips." On which words St. Jerome, or whoever is the author of book II on Proverbs, chapter X, says: "If anyone wishes to be joined in friendship with you, and you see this person revealing the secrets of a former friend, beware of him as treacherous."
These things apply in general to the obligation of keeping secrets. For in particular there are some revelations of secrets in which, besides unfaithfulness, the circumstances of other sins accumulate. For instance, to reveal to robbers where a neighbor's treasure lies hidden, besides being unfaithfulness, is a form of theft; and to betray a person in hiding to enemies who will kill him is a form of homicide. So Socrates used to say that trust should be cultivated more in secrets than in entrusted money. And Cato is most celebrated on this account, that he sacredly concealed the secrets of friends. And Simonides considered those of the lowest character who could not keep secrets, and likened them to that slave in the comic poet, who, being full of cracks, poured out secrets.
Among Christians, moreover, the obligation of keeping secrets is even more sacred, so much so that a priest must administer the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist to a secret sinner, lest he reveal his crime, even if he knows it secretly outside of confession, as St. Augustine teaches, homily 50 On Penance, and it is cited in II, Question I, chapter Multi. Indeed, the obligation of keeping the secret of sacramental confession is so sacred that a confessor must undergo a thousand deaths rather than reveal even the slightest sin of a penitent; if he does otherwise, he commits a grave sacrilege. And from this secret neither the Supreme Pontiff nor the entire Church can dispense. These and more things Dominicus Soto teaches in his Lecture on Keeping Secrets.
20. FOR AS A MAN WHO LOSES HIS FRIEND, SO ALSO IS HE WHO LOSES THE FRIENDSHIP OF HIS NEIGHBOR.
So the Roman edition and St. Augustine in his Speculum, as if saying: Just as you lose a friend through death—for when he dies, the friendship you had with him likewise dies, and this irreparably, because from death there is no return to life, nor can a dead man come back to life—so too you lose a friend and his friendship through the revelation of a secret, when you divulge his secrets; and this irrevocably, because you take away trust, which is, as it were, the soul and life of friendship. Secondly, Palacius says: A friend and friendship go at an equal pace, and therefore if you have slightly violated the friendship, you have also slightly violated the friend; but if by a lethal blow (such as the revelation of a secret) you have wounded the friendship, believe that the friend is altogether lost, just as a bird is lost when it has flown from the hand, and a deer when it has fled from the snare. The Greek, reading contrarily echthron, that is, "enemy," instead of "friend," has: "For just as someone has destroyed his enemy, so you have lost the friendship of your neighbor"; that is, as the Zurich Bible translates: "for just as someone has slain his enemy, so you will have lost the goodwill of your friend." For "has destroyed" is taken actively for "to kill," as if saying: Just as one who kills an enemy destroys his life, so one who reveals the secret of a friend destroys and kills, as it were, his friendship. The Syriac, however: "For just as one who loses his portion, so you have lost the friendship of your friend." Jansenius explains the Greek differently, as if saying: Just as without hope of obtaining friendship a man loses his enemy, namely as regards his friendship—for a true enemy will never be a true friend—so also it is with the man who through his treachery, or through the vain disclosure of secrets entrusted to him, loses the friendship of his neighbor, that is, of his friend; namely, he loses it irrecoverably, and will find him no more kindly disposed to himself than his enemy.
were to uncover the secrets of men, the greatest disturbance, indeed the overthrow of human society, would follow. Therefore it is a natural precept that men should mutually guard each other's secrets. Therefore the obligation of keeping secrets belongs to natural, divine, and human law. Therefore he who, upon giving his word, receives the secret of a friend, is bound to keep that secret by justice, just as he is bound to keep a deposit; for a secret is worth more than a deposit of money. And so even he who by injury has extorted another's secret from him is bound to keep it, just as a thief is bound to restore what he has stolen; so that, if anyone has opened another's letters, besides having sinned gravely, he is obligated to keep the secret.
21 AND 22. AND AS ONE WHO RELEASES A BIRD FROM HIS HAND, SO YOU HAVE ABANDONED YOUR NEIGHBOR, AND YOU WILL NOT CATCH HIM; DO NOT FOLLOW HIM, BECAUSE HE IS FAR AWAY; FOR HE HAS FLED LIKE A DEER FROM A SNARE.
He proves by two similes, of a bird and a deer, that the friendship of one who has treacherously revealed a friend's secret is irrecoverable, as if saying: Just as a bird released from the fowler's hand immediately flies away into trees and forests, and rejoices that it has been freed from the fowler's hands, and rejoicing in its freedom, flees far from him, so that, although the fowler pursues it to recapture it, he can never catch it; so likewise a friend, treacherously injured by a friend who has revealed his secrets, flees from him, and rejoices that he is freed from his treachery, and never returns to his friendship, even if asked and solicited by him. Again, just as a deer, extricating itself from a snare, rejoices that it is freed from the snare, and flees to the rocks and cliffs, and is wholly on guard against the snare; so too a friend, betrayed by a friend, turns entirely away from him, and withdraws to the greatest distance, and rejoices that he is freed from the snare of a treacherous friend, and always guards himself against him as against a snare. The Zurich Bible: "As if you had released a bird from your hand, so will you have lost your friend, whom no hunting will recover; do not pursue him, because he has departed far off, and like a deer (in Greek, dorcas) he will escape him"; the Syriac: "like a bird you have made him fly from your hands, and you will not hunt him, and you will not follow him; because he has fled like that deer from a net, and like a bird from a snare." For the recovery of both is to be despaired of. Thanks be to Christ, who, though so gravely offended by us and so gravely wounded for us, does not reject our friendship; indeed there is a sure hope that He will be as much a friend to us when we repent as if we had not sinned.
A similar and notable fable exists in Damascene, in the History of Barlaam, chapter X, which, because it explains this passage of Sirach, I shall append: The nightingale, he says, having been captured by a fowler and destined by him for death, in order to escape it, used this stratagem and speech to him: "What profit, O man, will come to you from my death? For you cannot fill your belly with me. But if you free me from my bonds, I will hand down to you three precepts,
23. BECAUSE HIS SOUL IS WOUNDED, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO BIND HIM ANY FURTHER.
He alludes to the gazelle, or deer, caught by a snare and spear and pierced by darts, as if saying: Just as a deer, pierced by darts and wounded by hunters, flees very far from them into the rocks: so too a friend, treacherously betrayed by a friend who has revealed his secrets, will flee very far from him; because his soul, intimately wounded by this dart of treachery, is so hurt with pain that you cannot bind this wound of his, but it is clearly incurable and beyond remedy, because it pervades the innermost depths of the soul and heart. The concise Greek text joins this verse with the following, as will shortly be apparent.
24. AND OF A CURSE THERE IS RECONCILIATION (so the Roman and Greek editions; therefore those who read "remembrance" are wrong), BUT TO REVEAL THE SECRETS OF A FRIEND IS THE DESPAIR OF AN UNHAPPY SOUL.
as if saying: If you have hurled a curse, that is, an insult, against someone, there is a way and means by which you can mend this injury and reconcile with him; but if someone reveals secrets entrusted to him in good faith by a friend, his soul is unhappy, and he must utterly despair of reconciliation with the friend he has treacherously wronged. Wherefore Solon wisely says in Ausonius: "Reprove a kinsman privately, but praise him publicly." And Publilius Syrus: "Admonish friends in secret, praise them openly." The Greek joins this verse with the preceding one, and reads thus: "for a wound can indeed be bound up, and there is reconciliation from an insult, but he who has revealed secrets has despaired." So the Roman edition, which reads apelpise, that is, "has despaired," that is, he despairs of reconciliation; for which the Complutensian reads apolose pistin, that is, "has lost trust"; because no one will any longer have trust in him as in one who is treacherous, so as to believe him and entrust his secrets to him. The Zurich Bible agrees with the Roman: "for a wound can indeed be bound up, and there is room for reconciliation from insults, but the betrayer of secrets (unhappy soul) has lost hope"; and the Syriac: "because for wounds there is a remedy, and for a quarrel there is reconciliation, but for the revelation of a secret, despair."
From this it is clear that in friendship the gravest crime is to betray the secrets of friends (especially if they are of great importance and dear to the friend's heart); for it makes the soul unhappy, violates friendship lethally, and loses the friend (who is half of one's soul) irreconcilably. So Palacius says, adding that the one who reveals also brings into suspicion of fraud and danger the person to whom he reveals. Whence Jerome, as Maximus says in sermon 20, used to say that those who divulge secrets do injury even to those to whom they divulge them. For we hate not only those who have babbled, but also those who have heard what we did not want them to. Wherefore St. Ambrose was so tenacious in keeping the secrets of friends that he would not reveal them even to his brother Satyrus, who was most intimate with him, as he himself relates in the funeral oration for the same.
which, if you obey them, will benefit you greatly throughout your entire life.' He, moved with admiration by her speech, promised that if he heard something new from her, he would immediately grant her freedom and release her. The nightingale then turned to the man and said: 'Never undertake a thing you cannot achieve; never regret a past event; never believe an incredible story. Keep these three commands, and things will go splendidly for you.' Admiring the shrewdness and prudence of these words, he released her from her bonds. The nightingale, therefore, wishing to test whether he had understood the force of the words he had heard, and had derived any benefit from them, flying through the air said to him: 'Alas, how void of wisdom you are, O man! What a treasure you have lost today! For in my innards there is a pearl exceeding in size the egg of an ostrich.' When he heard this, he was disturbed with grief, and regretted that the nightingale had escaped from his hands. And trying to seize her again, he said: 'Come, I pray, to my house, and when you have been received by me splendidly and kindly, I will dismiss you with honor.' But the nightingale said to him: 'Now I know for certain that you are a fool and simpleton. For after you received with a ready mind and gladly heard the things that were said to you, you derived no benefit from them. For I warned you not to be led by regret over a past event, and behold, you are disturbed with grief because I withdrew from your hands by flight, being affected with regret over a past event. I commanded you not to undertake things you cannot achieve, and yet you try to seize me when you cannot follow my flight. Besides, I also told you not to give credence to an incredible story; and yet you believed that in my innards there was a pearl exceeding the size of my whole body, and you did not have even this much prudence, that you might understand that my whole self does not even approach the size of an ostrich's egg; how therefore could this tiny body contain so great a pearl?' These things, which he himself applies to unfaithful idolaters, we can apply to treacherous friends who reveal secrets. For they will not actually obtain the thing they desire to achieve through the revelation of a secret, namely the friendship of a third party to whom they reveal it, since they are regarded and shunned by him as treacherous, and so they repent of the past revelation; and when they think and try to return to their former friend and reconcile with him, they believe and attempt something incredible and impossible. For he who has once been deceived by an unfaithful friend will no longer trust him, nor will he allow himself to be deceived by him a second time: therefore he will no longer expose himself to this danger of deception, and so will not disclose his secrets to him.
FOURTH PART OF THE CHAPTER. ON DECEIT AND THE DECEITFUL, AND THAT DECEITS RECOIL UPON THE DECEITFUL.
St. Ambrose comments on these words: "An apt little verse," he says, "against those who betray a secret," and gives the example of Judas: "Judas would enter," he says, "seeking to betray the Savior, to see what He was doing and what He was saying, in order to catch Him in His speech and report it to the Jews." And further: "He would go out from the banquet of Christ to the robbery of the devil; he would go out from the grace of sanctification to the snare of death." Similar persons can be seen in the courts of princes, where ambitious courtiers strive to deceive and supplant their rivals by flattery, and deceive the prince, and often work toward the ruin of themselves and the commonwealth. Therefore it seems that Sirach was conversant in the court of Ptolemy or a similar king or prince, where the prince, because of flatterers, was a plague to the commonwealth, says Palacius. How detestable this is he adds, saying:
25. HE WHO WINKS WITH HIS EYE DEVISES WICKED THINGS, AND NO ONE WILL CAST HIM OFF.
Wrongly, in the Speculum of St. Augustine printed at Paris, it reads "adjiciet" (will add). He passes from the treacherous friend to the false and hypocritical one, who pretends to be a friend while being an enemy, and secretly plots evil and destruction against him, as if saying: A false friend, or a flatterer and hypocrite, winks at his friend with his eye, as if being kind and feigning a secret friendship with him, while in his heart he nurses hatred: "And no one will cast him off"; because, seeing his friendly nods, one will consider him a true friend, since one does not see his deceitful heart. The translator read oudeis, that is, "no one"; now they read eidos, that is, "knowing," whence they translate: "He who knows him (his hypocrisy) will depart from him." So the Complutensian edition; the Roman, however: "no one will remove him from himself," as if saying: No one among men will make him abandon his hypocrisy, so as to strip off his wickedness and the hatred he carries in his heart. The Zurich Bible: "he who winks with his eyes plots evil; he who knows him will let him go"; the Syriac, however: "he who washes his brow" (yet by a slight difference of one letter it means "he who winks with his eye"), "but destruction awaits him." Note: In Scripture, to wink with the eye is to feign or plot deceit; because this gesture belongs to the false, cunning, and fraudulent. Whence in Proverbs VI, 13, the perverse man is depicted thus: "An apostate man, a worthless fellow, walks with a crooked mouth, winks with his eyes, shuffles with his feet, speaks with his finger, with a wicked heart devises evil, and at all times sows quarrels." Similar things are found in chapter X and Psalm XXXIV, 13.
26. IN THE SIGHT OF YOUR EYES HE WILL SWEETEN HIS MOUTH (the Greek Roman edition reads "your mouth," as if saying: He will pour sweet and honeyed words into your mouth and ears), AND WILL WONDER AT YOUR WORDS; BUT AT THE LAST HE WILL TWIST HIS MOUTH, AND IN YOUR WORDS HE WILL GIVE OFFENSE.
These are the gestures and actions of a false and fraudulent friend, as if saying: In your presence and before your eyes he will compose his face and expression for flattery, and will fashion sweet words by which to ensnare you and draw you into love for him, and therefore he will also pretend to look up to and admire your words as if they were learned and prudent: but at last, in your absence, "he will twist," that is, change, "his mouth," so as to make it harsh, evil, and perverse instead of sweet, by censuring you, criticizing you, and slandering you, so much so that from your words he will give offense, as if saying: from your words he will construct your ruin, for by distorting them and interpreting them maliciously, he will cause you to be ridiculed, hated, and to incur danger to your goods, reputation, or life. The Zurich Bible: "in your sight he will speak pleasant things and will admire your words; but afterward he will twist his mouth and will call your words into disfavor." Of such a person it is said in Psalm XL, 7: "He would enter to see, he would speak vain things, his heart gathered iniquity to itself." On which words
27. MANY THINGS HAVE I GONE THROUGH (so the Roman and Greek editions; therefore those who read "I have heard," as in the Speculum of St. Augustine, are wrong) AND I HAVE NOT FOUND HIS EQUAL, AND THE LORD WILL HATE HIM.
as if saying: Many crimes have I hated, but nothing have I so abominated as treachery in friendship and the betrayal of a friend; therefore God will pursue such a person with hatred and punish him severely. Whence the Zurich Bible: "I detest very many things, but nothing so much as such a person, and the Lord also hates him"; the Syriac: "many things have I hated, but not like a man of this kind, and God also will hate him and will curse him."
28. HE WHO THROWS A STONE ON HIGH, IT WILL FALL UPON HIS OWN HEAD, AND A DECEITFUL BLOW OF THE DECEITFUL (so read with the Roman edition; the Greek, however, has "deceitful") WILL OPEN WOUNDS.
He has shown thus far how great is the perversity of the treacherous and deceitful friend; now he assigns the fitting punishment for him, namely that the deceits he has plotted against others will, by God's just judgment, recoil upon himself. He shows this by four proverbial similes. The first is this, as if saying: Just as a stone thrown on high often falls back on the head of the thrower, since he is nearby, indeed directly beneath it; so a deceitful blow will divide and wound the deceitful man himself, that is, the evil you plot against another will recoil upon you. The Greek more expressively reads: "he who throws a stone on high throws it upon his own head, and a deceitful blow will open wounds"; the Syriac: "he who hurls a stone, it will be turned against him; and he who strikes in secret will be handed over to destruction"; the Zurich Bible: "he who throws a stone on high will throw it upon his own head; and a clandestine blow inflicts a wound." For he who strives to strike another clandestinely, in order to conceal his hand and blow, must keep his sword or weapon drawn close to himself; which results in easily and inadvertently wounding himself in the arm, thigh, or another part. Moreover, St. Augustine, or the author of the book On Friendship, chapter XIII, says: "A deceitful blow is secret detraction; the blow of the serpent and the asp is the bite
deadly, of which Solomon says, Ecclesiastes chapter X: 'If a serpent bites in silence, nothing less belongs to him who secretly detracts.'" Here is relevant that saying of Plutarch, in the Moralia: "If a javelin strikes something solid, it is sometimes turned back upon the thrower; so an insult aimed at a strong and steadfast man rebounds upon the one who insults."
29. The second simile, or proverb, follows, meaning the same thing: "And he who digs a pit will fall into it." (Third): AND HE WHO SETS A STONE FOR HIS NEIGHBOR WILL STUMBLE OVER IT. (Fourth): AND HE WHO SETS A SNARE FOR ANOTHER WILL PERISH IN IT. The physical reason is that he who digs a pit, after it is dug, walks around its edge and labors to arrange or cover it: which results in his foot slipping, or the earth giving way from the edge or the bottom of the rim where he stands, and he easily slides unexpectedly into the depth of the pit. The same applies to the stone and the snare. He alludes to hunters, who dig pits and trenches in the paths of wild animals, which they then skillfully cover, so that animals walking carelessly may fall into them and be caught, as if saying: He who, like hunters, constructs a pit and a trap for another, will himself fall into a similar one, indeed into the very same one; he will be caught by his own deceit; he himself brings upon himself the evil he prepared for others.
He alludes to, indeed he cites, Proverbs XXVI, 27: "He who digs a pit will fall into it; and he who rolls a stone, it will return upon him"; where the Chaldean says: "He who rolls a stone, rolls it upon himself." And Psalm IX: "In this very snare which they hid, their foot has been caught; the Lord is known to execute judgment." Therefore when evil comes unexpectedly upon the deceitful man who plots evil against another, from the direction he did not expect, let him know that the cause is God, who as a just Judge executes judgments, and from ambush strikes and lays low the ambusher with a punishment fitting for him. And Ecclesiastes X, 8: "He who digs a pit will fall into it; and he who breaks down a hedge, a serpent will bite him. He who moves stones will be hurt by them; and he who splits wood will be wounded by them." And Psalm VII, 16: "He opened a pit and dug it out; and he fell into the hole he made. His sorrow shall return upon his own head, and his iniquity shall come down upon the crown of his head." And Job, chapter XVIII, 7: "His own counsel shall cast him down." And verse 9: "His foot shall be held in a snare, etc. His trap is hidden in the earth, and his snare upon the path." An example is found in Herod, who, wishing to deceive the three Magi seeking Christ, was himself deceived by them. The same Herod, wishing to kill Christ, killed all the infants, and among them his own son; so with Christ unharmed, he injured himself in his son. Hearing this, Augustus Caesar said, as Macrobius testifies in the Saturnalia: "I would rather be Herod's pig than his son"; because the Jews did not slaughter pigs, since eating pork was forbidden them by law. Whence Blessed Peter Chrysologus, sermon 152: "Deceitfulness rages," he says, "finding itself deceived, and fraud turned back upon itself is shattered. Herod gnashes his teeth, falling himself into the snare he had set." And after some lines: "Reaching for the heights, he falls from on high; striking at heaven, he enters the abyss; he who goes against God goes against himself."
More strictly, some take "pit" to mean a grave, as if saying: He who prepares death and a grave for another, prepares it for himself. The Greek, omitting the second proverb of the stone, has only the first of the pit and the third of the snare, in this way: "He who digs a pit will fall into it; and he who sets a snare will be caught by it." Then they apply these to the deceitful man, adding: "He who plots evil, it will recoil upon him, and he will not know whence it comes to him"; the Syriac, however: "he who digs a pit, his stature (standing in the pit while digging it) will fill it; and he who sets snares will be caught by them; and he who plots evil will fall into it, and will not know whence the evil comes upon him." Therefore what our translator adds: "Upon him who devises the most wicked plan it will recoil, and he will not know whence it comes to him," is not a new and separate statement; but is the conclusion or resolution of the proverbs already stated, and their application to the deceitful and perverse man, as if saying: Just as he who digs a pit falls into it, and he who stretches a snare is caught by it; so upon "him who devises" (that is, to the harm, injury, and ruin of the deviser—for it is a dative of disadvantage, as grammarians call it) "the most wicked plan" (in Greek, "evils," that is, evil counsels, which he himself devised for himself, or others devised for him) "will recoil upon him," namely, "the most wicked plan," that is, the deceit and destruction which he plotted against others. Whence the Zurich Bible clearly says: "he who plots evil will be wrapped in evils" (reading with the Roman edition kylisthesetai, for which the Complutensian reads aulisthesetai, that is, 'they will dwell upon him'), "and will not know whence they come upon him." Therefore "to devise a most wicked plan" in this passage does not mean to give or suggest wicked advice to another; but to enter into an evil plan against someone, to plot evil against another and carry it out: for such a person often brings upon himself, beyond expectation, the evil he prepares for another; as Haman was hanged on the gallows he had constructed for Mordecai.
Moreover, these maxims signify not what always happens, but what often happens, as I noted at the beginning in the Canons.
will return upon him'; where the Chaldean says: 'He who rolls a stone, rolls it upon himself.' And Psalm IX: 'In this very snare which they hid, their foot has been caught; the Lord is known to execute judgment.' Therefore when evil comes unexpectedly upon the deceitful man who plots evil against another, from the direction he did not expect, let him know that the cause is God, who as a just Judge executes judgments, and from ambush strikes and lays low the ambusher with a punishment fitting for him. And Ecclesiastes X, 8: 'He who digs a pit will fall into it; and he who breaks down a hedge, a serpent will bite him. He who moves stones will be hurt by them; and he who splits wood will be wounded by them.' And Psalm VII, 16: 'He opened a pit and dug it out; and he fell into the hole he made. His sorrow shall return upon his own head, and his iniquity shall come down upon the crown of his head.' And Job, chapter XVIII, 7: 'His own counsel shall cast him down.' And verse 9: 'His foot shall be held in a snare, etc. His trap is hidden in the earth, and his snare upon the path.' An example is found in Herod, who, wishing to deceive the three Magi seeking Christ, was himself deceived by them. The same Herod, wishing to kill Christ, killed all the infants, and among them his own son; so with Christ unharmed, he injured himself in his son.
Hearing this, Augustus Caesar said, as Macrobius testifies in the Saturnalia: 'I would rather be Herod's pig than his son'; because the Jews did not slaughter pigs, since eating pork was forbidden them by law. Whence Blessed Peter Chrysologus, sermon 152: 'Deceitfulness rages,' he says, 'finding itself deceived, and fraud turned back upon itself is shattered. Herod gnashes his teeth, falling himself into the snare he had set.' And after some lines: 'Reaching for the heights, he falls from on high; striking at heaven, he enters the abyss; he who goes against God goes against himself.'
The antistrophes of these proverbs are the similar ones of the Hebrews: "The archer was killed by the very arrow which he himself fashioned with his own hand. The craftsman sits in the stocks which he fabricated with his own hand. In the spoon which the artisan carved, mustard burns his own mouth. From the forest itself and into the forest itself the axe enters." And those of the Greeks: "You constructed this device against yourself; you invented this scheme for your own destruction." Which Lucian applies to the legacy-hunter who, having written the rich man as his sole heir and produced his will to provoke the rich man to do the same, was suddenly crushed by the collapse of a roof, and left his own possessions to the one whose wealth he had greedily coveted. Likewise: "The thrush creates its own evil"; because it excretes birdlime, by which not only other birds but also the thrush itself is caught. For birdlime, as Pliny testifies, does not grow except when ripened in the belly and excreted through the bowels of birds, especially wood pigeons and thrushes. Likewise: "You hurl weapons taken from us against us." Plutarch records that the general Brasidas, drawing a weapon from his own body, ran through the one who had thrown it. Likewise: "He himself has found the source of his evil"; which Aeschylus uses in his Persians. For there are very many springs whose water, when tasted, brings death or madness, which it would have been better not to have found. And those of the Latins: "I cut his throat with his own sword, with his own
weapon." Which Ovid rendered in verse in the Epistle of the Heroines: "I gave you the oar by which you would flee from me: Alas! I suffer wounds made by my own weapons."
And Cicero: "It is inevitable that you yourself run upon your own sword's point." And Livy, book I of the Punic War: "Hannibal felt that he was being attacked with his own arts." Trebellius Pollio recounts that Marius, one of the thirty tyrants, was run through with a sword by a soldier saying: "This is the sword which you yourself made." For Marius before his reign had been a blacksmith, and had used that soldier's labor in his smithy. Likewise: "The sheep provides the knife, the goat finds the sword," by which it is to be slaughtered. For once when the Corinthians wished to sacrifice a goat to Juno Acraea and had forgotten the knife, the goat itself, digging with its hooves, unearthed a knife buried under the ground, and was slaughtered with it. Likewise: "The crow the scorpion"—supply, "snatched"; for the crow, having seized a scorpion, received a lethal wound from its curved tail and perished. Likewise: "Do not irritate hornets. Do not stir up a concealed evil. Do not rouse a sleeping fire. Do not provoke an eight-footer" (a scorpion, for it has eight legs). "Do not disturb Camarina." Likewise: "The goat against its own horns." For the fable has it that a goat, wounded by a javelin, looking around to see whence the evil had come upon it, and observing that the bow was fitted with goat horns, said: "I produced horns for my own destruction." Likewise: "You are letting loose a lion: You are provoking a lion." Aristophanes in the Frogs and Valerius Maximus, book VII, chapter On Wisely Spoken Words, record that the Megarians, when being captured by Calenus, broke open cages and let loose lions against the enemy, thinking they would throw an obstacle before the sword already raging against the citizens' heads; but they were miserably torn apart and devoured by the very same lions, in a spectacle sad even for the enemy to behold. So indeed plots recoil upon the head of their author; and, as Attalus says: "Malice drinks the greatest part of itself"; and, as St. Augustine says, sermon 13 On the Words of the Lord according to Matthew: "Each person's own desire is his storm."
An example is Busiris the tyrant, who, as the same St. Augustine says, book XVIII of the City of God, chapter XII, used to sacrifice his guests to his gods; and when he wished to sacrifice Hercules too, he was killed and sacrificed by him. Likewise Phalaris, whom the same St. Augustine mentions, epistle 52 to Macedonius; for Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum in Sicily, was enclosed and burned in the brazen bull by which he was accustomed to burn others. Moreover, the inventor of this bull and instrument of torture was Perillus, to delight the most cruel Phalaris with the voices of the condemned enclosed in the bull, since instead of a human voice they would produce a bull's bellowing; but he himself, when the tyrant wished to test the torture and bellowing on its very author, was enclosed in the same bull and burned, delighting Phalaris with his bellowing. Of which Ovid says in the Art of Love: "And Phalaris roasted in the bull the limbs of violent Perillus: The unhappy author inaugurated his own work."
For sometimes deceits succeed prosperously for the deceitful, and the impious prosper in this life, dominating and mocking the pious; but they will atone for this prosperity and these deceits all the more severely in purgatory or hell, inasmuch as in this life they were more successful—or rather, more truly unsuccessful—in their deceits. Add that, although deceit sometimes remains unpunished in this life for a time, yet at last it pays the deserved penalties, especially at death, as is clear in the cases of Jeroboam, Shallum, Pekah, Zimri, Hoshea, and the other kings of Israel, who by force or fraud invaded the kingdom, and in turn were one another's executioners, as is clear from the book of IV Kings, especially chapter XV and following.
Finally, note: A pit is dug with labor, but without labor the digger slips into it; and the one who throws a stone on high throws it with violence; but the stone, thrown by its own weight, falls back on the thrower's head: so likewise injuries and frauds are inflicted with difficulty, but without difficulty they recoil and rebound upon the head of the one who inflicts them.
The theological reason is that God hates and abominates the deceitful who plot destruction for others, as enemies of His truth, sincerity, faithfulness, justice, and goodness. Therefore, indignant against them, He rises up, ensnares, and destroys them, as David frequently sings in the Psalms. Again, God catches and punishes the guilty in their very guilt—the deceitful in their deceit—so that one is punished in the very thing in which one sinned. Therefore God shows Himself as if deceitful to the deceitful, according to that saying: "With the elect You will be elect, and with the perverse You will be perverse"; that is, You will deal not candidly and kindly, but evilly and perversely, that is, severely and shrewdly: because he himself has been inverted and perverted from what he ought to be, namely candid and faithful, Psalm XVII, 27.
The ethical and political reason is that the deceitful person deserves to be caught by his own deceit. For the law of retaliation states: "He has committed fraud; let him suffer fraud." And: "Let faith be broken with him who breaks faith." Therefore men are accustomed to compete with the deceitful by deceit, and to pursue them to destruction as violators of the rights of simplicity and human intercourse, as will be clear from the proverbs and examples about to be cited. Here is relevant the fable of the crab and the serpent in Aesop: "The serpent," he says, "lived together with the crab, having formed a partnership with it. So the crab, simple in its ways, kept urging it to change its craftiness too. But it would not obey at all. When therefore the crab observed it sleeping, and crushed it with all its might, it killed it. And when the serpent lay stretched out after death, the crab said: 'This is how you should have been before—just and simple—for then you would not have suffered this punishment.' The fable signifies that those who approach friends with deceit can themselves be harmed."
A more divine example is found in the tyrant Eugenius, whose arrows and weapons, as he fought against the pious Emperor Theodosius, God drove back by wind and turned against the very thrower and his soldiers, of whom Claudian says in the Panegyric of Theodosius: "O you who are exceedingly beloved of God, for whom Aeolus pours forth armed storms from his caves, and turns the weapons back upon their authors, and drives back their spears with a whirlwind?"
In like manner, if an arrow is cast at a rock or steel, it rebounds upon the thrower and wounds the wounder. So not rarely do detraction, calumny, and false accusation rebound upon the detractor, calumniator, and accuser, defaming him and sometimes destroying him.
Tropologically, St. Chrysostom, in On the Incomprehensible Nature of God, homily 3, applies these words to blasphemy and blasphemers: "Those who blaspheme," he says, "and count it as nothing, injure their own salvation and perish. And very true is the saying of the one who tells blasphemous men: Those who throw a stone upward on high throw it upon their own heads. For just as one who hurls a stone upward cannot reach, let alone damage, a heavenly body, but receives the blow on his own head when the stone, thrown in the same way, returns: so those who blaspheme that blessed substance can never offend it, since it is far too great and exalted to be affected by any harm; but thus one hurls and aims a weapon against one's own soul, when one shows oneself ungrateful to the Lord who has done him good." St. Jerome, however, at the end of his commentary on Zephaniah, applies this proverb to those who mock and deride religious men and despisers of the world; for they will be mocked by God, indeed they will mock themselves on the day of judgment, Wisdom V, 4. St. Augustine, however, in epistle 68 to Januarius, applies the same to the Circumcellion heretics, who, wishing to stir up the emperor against the Catholics, stirred him up against themselves.
31. MOCKERY AND REPROACH OF THE PROUD, AND VENGEANCE LIKE A LION WILL LIE IN WAIT FOR HIM.
So the Roman edition. First, Jansenius explains it thus: Since the books, he says, consistently have the pronoun "illi" (to him) in the singular, as the German Greek manuscript also has; therefore this sentence must be referred to the one of whom the preceding sentence speaks, so that the three nominatives—mockery, and reproach, and vengeance—are referred to the verb "will lie in wait," and the sense is: The mockery and reproach of the proud, that is, which is inflicted by the proud upon the humble, and the vengeance which such a person tries to inflict on others—these very same evils, I say, will lie in wait for him, like a lion, that is, unexpectedly, suddenly, and powerfully they will attack him when the opportunity presents itself, and he will not be able to escape or overcome them; just as wild animals, which the lion hunts from ambush, cannot overcome the lion's power.
Secondly and genuinely, as if saying: Mockery and reproach are the condition and characteristic vice of the proud; for the proud, because they despise and oppress others to exalt themselves, therefore mock them, expose them to ridicule, detract from them, and heap many reproaches upon them: therefore retaliation and vengeance will be given them, "like a lion will lie in wait for him"—that is, for each one of them—to seize and destroy him suddenly and violently from ambush. For the Hebrews commonly use enallage of number, passing from plural to singular by syllepsis, to signify that what they threaten or promise to many, they threaten or promise to each individual: whence the Complutensian Greek and most others have "them" in the plural instead of "him." From which you may translate: "The mockery and insult belongs to the proud, and vengeance like a lion lies in wait for them." So Palacius: The proud, he says, are accustomed to inflict mockery and reproach on others; but for that mockery and reproach vengeance is prepared, as a lion is prepared in ambush for hunting, and as a lion springs forth from where the prey did not know: so also vengeance from God will spring forth from where the mocker did not expect. Let the mockery and reproach of the Jews against Christ serve as an example, from whose ambush Titus and Vespasian sprang forth, crushing all like a lion. Where the wonderful proportion and proportionality of God's vengeance upon the Jews should be noted: for with the very same mockeries and insults with which they mocked Christ, shortly afterward their king Agrippa was treated by the Alexandrians, as Philo narrates at length in his Against Flaccus, and from him Baronius, in the year of Christ 40, chapters II and III.
Note the phrase "like a lion." For he seems to allude to the fable of Aesop about the lion, the donkey, and the fox, which was well known in that age: for Aesop preceded Sirach by two hundred years and more; he flourished under Cyrus and Croesus, while Sirach flourished under Ptolemy Lagus and Philadelphus, who succeeded Alexander the Great. The fable goes as follows: "The donkey and the fox, having formed a partnership between themselves, went out to hunt. When a lion encountered them, the fox, seeing the impending danger, went to the lion and promised to deliver the donkey to him, if he would promise her immunity. When he said he would let her go, she led the donkey into certain traps so that he fell in. But the lion, seeing that he could not escape, first seized the fox, and then turned to the donkey." The moral: "The fable signifies that those who plot against their partners often unknowingly destroy themselves as well." Similar is the fable of the lion, the wolf, and the fox, which I shall shortly recount.
Do you want examples? Here they are. In like manner the proud Babylonian princes, plotting against and mocking Daniel, and reproaching him for his worship of the one God, and craftily forcing Darius to cast him into the lions' den: with Daniel unharmed, they themselves were cast into the same den by Darius's order and immediately devoured by the lions, Daniel chapter VI, 24. So the brothers of Joseph, who afflicted him, were in turn afflicted by him, though they did not recognize him; whence, remembering the injury inflicted upon him 22 years before, they immediately said: "We deserve to suffer these things, because we sinned against our brother." So also the shameless elders who plotted against the chastity and life of Susanna themselves underwent the people's stoning, which they had arranged—when God's
vengeance pressing upon them, they underwent, Daniel XIII. A more recent and more wonderful example is found in the Life of St. Elizabeth, queen of Portugal, whom in this jubilee year 1625 Urban VIII enrolled in the catalog of Saints. For when she had been accused of adultery before her husband King Denis by a certain courtier who envied another's favor with the queen, the king, enraged, immediately ordered the one accused of having committed adultery with the queen to be killed. For he gave orders to the furnace-workers stoking the furnace that they should throw into it the person whom he himself would send to them first thing the next morning at dawn. He therefore sent the one suspected of adultery. That man, on the way, heard the bell ringing for Mass: so according to his custom he heard it, and several subsequent Masses. Meanwhile the king, thinking he had already been thrown into the furnace and burned, sent the accuser to the furnace-workers, to ask whether they had carried out his orders. They therefore threw him, as if he were the first one sent by the king, into the furnace and burned him, as the king had commanded. Thus the mocker was mocked.
Thirdly, it can also be explained thus, as if saying: Mockery and reproach belong to proud men, that is, they are justly owed to them and accompany them, so that, just as they arrogantly despise others before them and mock them and heap insults upon them; so also others in turn may despise, mock, and heap insults upon them. For this is the just vengeance of God, which lies in wait for them, as a lion lies in wait for its prey, namely for wild donkeys and other wild animals. The Zurich Bible favors this sense: "Mockery and reproach," it says, "accompany the proud, and vengeance will lie in wait for them in the manner of a lion."
Mystically, Lyranus says: "The mockery and reproach of the proud," that is, which are inflicted by the proud upon the humble and poor in words, "and vengeance" in deeds, "like a lion will lie in wait for him," for the punishment of hell, so as to drag him into it secretly, as if from ambush.
Here is relevant the fable of the wolf and the fox: The lion, they say, lay sick; out of duty all the other animals visited him, except the fox. The wolf therefore accused her before the lion. To which the fox said: 'I, O lion, have been running about everywhere alone on your behalf, to seek a remedy for your illness from physicians, and I have found one.' When the lion immediately ordered her to reveal the remedy, she said: 'If you skin a live wolf and put on his hide.' The credulous lion immediately attacked the wolf and killed it. When it was dead, the cunning fox laughed that the calumniator's calumny had recoiled upon his own head. Whence the verse of Plutarch: "The parent with his own pen prepares damages for his liver—damages."
32. THOSE WHO DELIGHT IN THE FALL OF THE JUST WILL PERISH BY THE SNARE: AND SORROW WILL CONSUME THEM BEFORE THEY DIE.
By "snare" understand synecdochically a sudden and unexpected fall and ruin into which the impious rush, which they had fabricated for the just. In Greek: "snares will seize those who delight in the fall of the pious, and sorrow will consume them before death"; the Zurich Bible: "they will be consumed with sorrow before death," as if saying: They will waste away with long sorrow before death, so that life will be for them a harsh and prolonged dying, which will then be followed by present and eternal death in hell. The Syriac: "snares and nets will accompany those who know them, and will accompany them until the day of their death."
An example is found in Antiochus, who, after tormenting the faithful people, namely the Jews, was struck by God with a dire pain of the bowels and a terrible stench, so that worms swarmed from his body, and he himself could no longer bear his own stench, hated by his people and by himself, killed by prolonged torture, he breathed out his wretched soul, II Maccabees IX; and in Herod, who killed the infants in order to destroy Christ, who, in the fifth year after perpetrating the infanticide, long tortured by fever, cough, dysentery, gout, phthiriasis or the louse disease, rotting of the private parts, asthma, and stench, so much so that he attempted to kill himself, breathed out his wicked soul, as Josephus recounts, XVII Antiquities chapter X, and book I of the War, chapter XXI; and in the Emperor Hadrian, who, succeeding Trajan, striving to abolish the name of Christ and of Christians, on the mount of Calvary where Christ was crucified consecrated a statue of Jupiter, and profaned Bethlehem where He was born with a shrine of Adonis, the lover of Venus; finally struck by God with a flow of blood, consumption, and dropsy, seized with weariness of living, he attempted to kill himself, and when his dagger was taken away, becoming more violent, he requested poison from his physician; who killed himself so as not to give it. Finally, abstaining from food and drink, he destroyed himself by starvation, in the year of Christ 140, the twenty-first of his reign, as Dio and Spartianus narrate in their account of Hadrian.
Here is relevant the fable of the panther, which Phaedrus, the freedman of Augustus Caesar, recounts in book III of his Fables, chapter XLI. For when a panther had fallen into a pit, some shepherds mocked it, some by throwing stones, others by casting filth, others by shooting arrows: but others, more cautious, showed compassion and brought it food. When all had gone home, as if the beast were already dead and buried, the panther leapt out of the pit, and bringing companions with it, attacked those who had insulted it. 'I know,' it said, 'and have marked those who harmed me; I will spare those who helped me and fed me': so it tore the former apart, and to the latter, as if giving thanks, it showed favor. So the just in this life, as in a pit, are humbled, indeed humble themselves: the impious afflict and trample them; but the pious show them compassion. Therefore, when on the day of judgment the just are led out of this pit and exalted to thrones, to judge with Christ the world, they will condemn the impious who exulted in their fall; but will glorify the pious who had compassion on them, according to that saying: "The just shall rejoice when he shall see the vengeance; he shall wash his hands in the blood of the sinner," Psalm LVII, 11.
33. ANGER AND FURY, BOTH ARE EXECRABLE, AND THE SINFUL MAN WILL BE SUBJECT TO THEM.
He passes from treachery, mockery, and pride to the closely related anger and fury; and thus paves the way for what he says in the following chapter about forgiving injury and vengeance, as if saying: Just as I said treachery and pride are execrable, so likewise execrable is
treachery and pride; so likewise execrable is anger and fury. "Anger" differs from "fury" as genus from species, and as the imperfect from the perfect. For "anger" is a common flare-up and desire for vengeance; but "fury" is a vehement and burning anger, by which a man, as if driven by a fury, is carried away into the gravest destruction. For, as St. Basil says, cited by Antonius in the Melissa, part II, chapter LII: "Anger stirs up strife, strife begets insults, insults blows, blows wounds, and often death follows upon wounds."
Moreover, the phrase "and the sinful man will be subject to them" can be explained in three ways: first, as if saying: He will be "subject to"—in Greek enkrates, that is, having power over, sharing in, liable to them—namely, anger and fury; that is, the sinner will be prone to anger and fury, so that for a slight pleasure denied to him he becomes wrathful and furious. For sin is like a fury that attracts and summons another fury, namely anger and fury, as its sister. Whence the Zurich Bible translates: "both anger and fury are execrable, and the wicked man is liable to them"; others: "wrath and anger are themselves execrable, and the sinful man is held by them." Seneca rightly says in his Proverbs: "It is a thunderbolt when wrath dwells with power. He who has conquered anger has conquered his greatest enemy. An angry man even considers a crime to be a plan." But make an exception for vices; for one ought to be angry at vices. "Not to be angry at the things one ought to be angry at is the mark of a fool," says Aristotle, Ethics IV. Therefore, to be angry at vices is the mark of the holy and wise person.
Secondly, Rabanus, as if saying: A sinful man "holding on to," that is, tenacious of, anger and fury, so as to retain them in mind and memory for a long time and firmly, in order to avenge himself at his own time; whereas the just man, when he feels the impulse of anger, suppresses it through the fear and love of God; or, if he has said something in anger, "he immediately returns to his heart and is contrite," Psalm IV, verse 5.
Thirdly, the Syriac takes these words as referring to the anger and fury of God, as if saying: The sinner who is angry at others and rages against them will likewise be "subject to," that is, guilty and liable to, the anger and fury of God, so that God, angered against him and raging as it were, may punish anger with anger and fury with fury. For so it translates: "Hatred and anger are defilements, and the fraudulent man will lose his way, and will find retribution from the Lord; because all his sins have been carefully observed against him, so that in their own time they may be avenged and punished according to their deserts." This sense is favored by what Sirach adds next: "He who wishes to avenge himself will find vengeance from the Lord." And this sense is the fullest, and encompasses the two preceding ones.